THE REVELATION
OF
LAW
IN
SCRIPTURE
Considered with respect both to
its own nature, and to its relative
place in successive dispensations.
Patrick Fairbairn, D.D.
Report
any errors to Ted Hildebrandt: ted.hildebrandt@gordon.edu
T. & T. Clark's 1869
PREFACE
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THE subject handled in the following Lectures enters
so deeply into the whole scheme and objects of
Divine Revelation, that no apology can be required for
directing public attention to it; at any period, and in
any circumstances of the church, it may fitly enough be
chosen for particular inquiry and discussion. But no
one acquainted with the recent phases of theological
sentiment in this country, and with the prevailing
tendencies of the age, can fail to perceive its special
appropriateness as a theme for discussion at the present
time. If this, however, has naturally led to a somewhat
larger proportion of the controversial element than might
otherwise have been necessary, I have endeavoured to
give the discussion as little as possible of a polemical
aspect; and have throughout been more anxious to unfold
and establish what I conceive to be the true, than to go
into minute and laboured refutations of the false. On
this account, also, personal references have been omitted
to some of the more recent advocates of the views here
controverted, where it could be done without prejudice to
the course of discussion.
viii PREFACE.
The terms of the Trust-deed, in connection with
which the Lectures appear, only require that not fewer
than six be delivered in Edinburgh, but as to publica-
tion wisely leave it to the discretion and judgment of the
Lecturer, either to limit himself to that number, or to
supplement it with others according to the nature and
demands of his subject. I have found it necessary to
avail myself of this liberty, by the addition of half as
many more Lectures as those actually delivered; and one
of these (Lecture IV.), from the variety and importance
of the topics discussed in it, has unavoidably extended to
nearly twice the length of any of the others. However
unsuitable this would have been if addressed to an
audience, as a component part of a book there will be
found in it a sufficient number of breaks to relieve the
attention of the reader.
The Supplementary Dissertations, and the exposition
of the more important passages in St Paul’s writings in
reference to the law, which follow the Lectures, have
added considerably to the size of the volume; but it
became clear as I proceeded, that the discussion of the
subject in the Lectures would have been incomplete
without them. It is possible, indeed, that in this
respect some may be disposed to note a defect rather
than a superfluity, and to point to certain other topics or
passages which appear to them equally entitled to a place.
I have only to say, that as it was necessary to make a
selection, I have endeavoured to embrace in this portion
what seemed to be, for the present time, relatively the
most important, and, as regards the passages of Scripture,
PREFACE. ix
have, I believe, included all that are of essential moment
for the ends more immediately contemplated. But
several topics, I may be allowed to add, very closely
connected with the main theme of this volume, have
been already treated in my work on the ‘Typology of
Scripture;’ and though it has been found impracticable
to avoid coming here occasionally on the ground which
had been traversed there, it was manifestly proper that
this should not be done beyond what the present subject,
in its main features, imperatively required.
GLASGOW, October 1868.
CONTENTS.
LECTURE I.
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY-Prevailing Views in respect to the Ascendency of Law
(1) In the Natural; (2) In the Moral and Religious Sphere; and
the Relation in which they stand to the Revelations of Scripture on
the subject, . . . . . . . . . 1-33
LECTURE II.
The Relation of Man at Creation to Moral Law—How far or in what
respects the Law in its Principles was made known to him- The
grand Test of his Rectitude, and his Failure under it, . . . . 34-60
LECTURE III.
The Revelation of Law, strictly so called, viewed in respect to the Time
and Occasion of its Promulgation, . . . . . . 61-81
LECTURE IV.
The Law in its Form and Substance—Its more Essential Characteristics
—and the Relation of one Part of its Contents to another, . . .82-146
LECTURE V.
The Position and Calling of Israel as placed under the Covenant of Law,
what precisely involved in it—False Views on the subject Exposed
—The Moral Results of the Economy, according as the Law was
legitimately used or the reverse, . . . . . . 147-179
LECTURE VI.
The Economical Aspect of the Law—The Defects adhering to it as such
—The Relation of the Psalms and Prophets to it—Mistaken Views
of this Relation—The great Problem with which the Old Testament
closed, and the Views of different Parties respecting its Solution, . 180-213
CONTENTS.
PAGE
LECTURE VII.
The Relation of the Law to the Mission and Work of Christ—The
Symbolical and Ritual finding in Him its termination, and the Moral its
formal Appropriation and perfect Fulfilment, . . . 214-252
LECTURE VIII.
The Relation of the Law to the Constitution, the Privileges, and the
Calling of the Christian Church, . . . . . . 253-291
LECTURE IX.
The Re-introduction of Law into the Church of the New Testament, in
the sense in which Law was abolished by Christ and His Apostles, 292-323
SUPPLEMENTARY DISSERTATIONS.
I. The Double Form of the Decalogue, and the Questions to which it
has given rise, . . . . . . . 325-334
II. The Historical Element in God’s Revelations of Truth and Duty,
considered with an especial respect to their Claim on Men’s
Responsibilities and Obligations, . . . . . 335-355
III. Whether a Spirit of Revenge is countenanced in the Writings of
the Old Testament, . . . . . . . 356-364
_________________
EXPOSITION OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PASSAGES
ON THE LAW IN ST PAUL’S EPISTLES.
PAGE PAGE
2 Cor. iii. 2-18, 366 Rom. v. 12-21, 415
Gal. ii. 14-21, 385 " vi. 14-18, 421
" iii. 19-26, 391 " vii., 425
" iv. 1-7, 400 " x. 4-9, 442
" v. 13-15, 403 " xiv. 1-7 448
Rom. ii. 13-15, 405 Eph. ii. 11-17, 453
" iii.19,20, 408 Col.ii.11-17, 462
" iii. 31, 412 1 Tim. i. 8-11, 474
THE REVELATION OF LAW IN SCRIPTURE.
LECTURE I.
INTRODUCTORY.
PREVAILING VIEWS IN RESPECT TO THE ASCENDENCY OF LAW
(1) IN THE NATURAL; (2) IN THE MORAL AND RELIGIOUS
SPHERE; AND THE RELATION IN WHICH THEY STAND TO
THE REVELATIONS OF SCRIPTURE ON THE SUBJECT.
AMONG the more marked tendencies of our age,
especially as represented by its scientific and literary
classes, may justly be reckoned a prevailing tone of sen-
timent regarding the place and authority of law in the
Divine administration. The sentiment is a divided one;
for the tendency in question takes a twofold direction,
according as it respects the natural, or the moral and
religious sphere—in the one exalting, we may almost say
deifying law; in the other narrowing its domain, some-
times even ignoring its existence. An indissoluble chain
of sequences, the fixed and immutable law of cause and
effect, whether always discoverable or not, is contem-
plated as binding together the order of events in the
natural world; but as regards the spiritual, it is the
inherent right or sovereignty of the individual mind that
is chiefly made account of, subject only to the claims of
social order, the temporal interests of humanity, and the
general enlightenment of the times. And as there can
be no doubt that these divergent lines of thought have
found their occasion, and to some extent also their ground,
2 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
the one in the marked advancement of natural science,
the other in the progress of the Divine dispensations, it
will form a fitting introduction to the inquiry that lies
before us to take a brief review of both, in their general
relation to the great truths and principles of Scripture.
I. We naturally look first, in such a survey, to the
physical territory, to the vast and complicated field of
nature. Here a twofold disturbance has arisen—the one
from men of science pressing, not so much ascertained
facts, as plausible inferences or speculations built on them,
to unfavourable conclusions against Scripture; the other
from theologians themselves overstepping in their inter-
pretations of Scripture, and finding in it revelations of
law, or supposed indications of order, in the natural
sphere, which it was never intended to give. As so inter-
preted by Patristic, Mediaeval, and even some compara-
tively late writers, the Bible has unquestionably had its
authority imperilled by being brought into collision with
indisputable scientific results. But the better it is under-
stood the more will it be found to have practised in this
respect a studious reserve, and to have as little invaded
the proper field of scientific inquiry and induction, as to
have assumed, in regard to it, the false position of the
nature-religions of heathenism. It is the moral and
religious sphere with which the Bible takes strictly to
do; and only in respect to the more fundamental things
belonging to the constitution of nature and its relation to
the Creator, can it be said to have committed itself to any
authoritative deliverance. Written, as every book must
be that is adapted to popular use, in the language of
common life, it describes the natural phenomena of which
it speaks according to the appearances, rather than the
realities, of things. This was inevitable and requires to
LECT. I.] INTRODUCTORY. 3
be made due account of by those who would deal justly
with its contents. But while freely and familiarly dis-
coursing about much pertaining to the creation and pro-
vidence of the world, the Bible does not, in respect to the
merely natural frame and order of things, pronounce upon
their latent powers or modes of operation, nor does it
isolate events from the proper instrumental agencies. It
undoubtedly presents the works and movements of nature
in close connection with the will and pervasive energy of
God; but then it speaks thus of them all alike—of the
little as well as the great—of the ordinary not less than
the extraordinary, or more striking and impressive.
According to the Bible, God thunders, indeed, in the
clouds; but the winds also, even the gentlest zephyrs,
blow at His command, and do His bidding. If it is He
who makes the sun to know his going forth, and pour
light and gladness over the face of nature, it is He also
who makes the rain to fall and the seeds of the earth to
spring, and clothes the lilies of the field with beauty.
Not even a sparrow falls to the ground without Him.
And as in the nearer and more familiar of these opera-
tions everything is seen to be accomplished through
means and ordinances bound up with nature’s constitu-
tion; so, it is reasonable to infer, must it be with the
grander and more remote. In short, while it is the
doctrine of the Bible that God is in all, and in a sense
does all, nothing is authoritatively defined as to the how
or by what they are done; and science is at perfect
liberty to prosecute its researches with the view of dis-
covering the individual properties of things, and how,
when brought into relation, they act and react on each
other, so as to produce the results which appear in the
daily march of providence.
Now, let this relation of the Bible, with its true
4 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
religion, to the pursuits of science, be placed alongside
that of the false religions of Greek and Roman poly-
theism which it supplanted, and let the effect be noted—
the legitimate and necessary effect—of the progress of
science in its clearest and best established conclusions on
the one as compared with the other. Resting on an
essentially pantheistic basis, those ancient religions ever
tended to associate the objects and operations of nature
with the immediate presence and direct agency of some
particular deity—to identify the one in a manner with
the other; and very specially to do this with the greater
and more remarkable phenomena of nature. Thus Helios,
or the Sun, was deified in Apollo, and was not poetically
represented merely, but religiously believed, to mount
his chariot, drawn by a team of fiery steeds, in the morn-
ing, to rise by a solid pathway to mid-heaven, and then
descend toward the western horizon, that his wearied
coursers might be refreshed before entering on the labours
of another day. Selené, or the Moon, in like manner,
though in humbler guise, was contemplated as pursuing
her nocturnal course. Sun, moon, and stars, it was
believed, bathed themselves every night in the waves of
ocean, and got their fires replenished by partaking of the
Neptunian element. Eclipses were prodigies—portentous
signs of wrath in heaven—which struck fear into men’s
bosoms, as on the eve of direful calamities, and sometimes
so paralysing them as to become itself the occasion of the
sorest disasters. Hence, the philosophy which applied
itself to explore the operation of physical properties and
laws in connection with natural events, was accounted
impious; since, as Plutarch remarks,1 it seemed ‘to
ascribe things to insensate causes, unintelligent powers,
and necessary changes, thereby jostling aside the divine.’
1 Life of Nicias.
LECT. I.] THE ASCENDENCY OF LAW. 5
On this account Anaxagoras was thrown into prison by
the Athenians, and narrowly escaped with his life.
Socrates was less fortunate; he suffered the condemna-
tion and penalty of death, although he had not carried
his physical speculations nearly so far as Anaxagoras.
At his trial, however, he was charged with impiety, on
the ground of having said that the sun was a stone, and
the moon earth; he himself, however, protesting that
such was not his, but the doctrine of Anaxagoras; that he
held both sun and moon to be divine persons, as was
done by the rest of mankind. His real view seems to
have been, that the common and ordinary events of Pro-
vidence flowed from the operation of second causes, but
that those of greater magnitude and rarer occurrence
came directly from the interposition of a divine power.
Yet this modified philosophy was held to be utterly
inconsistent with the popular religion, and condemned as
an impiety. Of necessity, therefore, as science proceeded
in its investigations and discoveries, religion fell into the
background; as the belief in second causes advanced, the
gods, as no longer needed, vanished away. Physical
science and the polytheism of Greece and Rome were in
their very nature antagonistic, and every real advance of
the one brought along with it a shock to the other.
It is otherwise with the religion of the Bible, when
this is rightly understood, and nothing from without,
nothing foreign to its teaching, is imposed on it. For it
neither merges God in the works and operations of nature,
nor associates Him with one department more peculiarly
than another; while still it presents all—the works them-
selves, the changes they undergo, and every spring and
agency employed in accomplishing them—in dependence
on His arm and subordination to His will: He is in all,
through all, and over all. So that for those who have
6 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
imbibed the spirit of the Bible, there may appear the
most perfect regularity and continued sequence of opera-
tions, while God is seen and adored in connection with
every one of them. It is true, that the sensibilities of
religious feeling, or, as we should rather say, the fresh-
ness and power of its occasional outbursts, are less likely
to be experienced, and in reality are more rarely mani-
fested, when, in accordance with the revelations of science,
God’s agency is contemplated as working through material
forces under the direction of established law, than if,
without such an intervening medium, in specific acts of
providence, and by direct interference, He should make
His presence felt. The more that anything ceases to
appear strange to our view, abnormal—the more it comes
to be associated in our minds with the orderly domain of
law—the less startling and impressive does it naturally
become as an evidence of the nearness and power of God-
head: it no longer stands alone to our view, it is part of
a system, but still a system which, if viewed aright, has
been all planned by the wisdom, and is constantly sus-
tained and directed by the providence of God.
In this, as in so many other departments of human
interest and experience, there is a compensation in things.
What science may appear to take with one hand, it gives
—gives, one might almost say, more liberally with
another. If, for example, the revelation on scientific
grounds of the amazing regularity and finely-balanced
movements which prevail in the constitution and order of
the material universe, as connected with our planetary
system,—if this, in one aspect of it, should seem to have
placed God at a certain distance from the visible world,
in another it has but rendered His presiding agency and
vigilant oversight more palpably indispensable. For
such a vast, complicated, and wondrous mechanism, how
LECT. I.] THE ASCENDENCY OF LAW. 7
could it have originated? or, having originated, how
could it be sustained in action without the infinite skill
and ceaseless activity of an all-perfect Mind? There is
here what is incalculably more and better than some
occasional proofs of interference, or fitful displays of
power, however grand and imposing. There is clear-
sighted, far-reaching thought, nicely planned design,
mutual adaptations, infinitely varied, of part to part, the
action and reaction of countless forces, working with an
energy that baffles all conception, yet working with the
most minute mathematical precision, and with the effect
of producing both the most harmonious operation, and
the most diversified, gigantic, and beneficent results.
It is, too, the more marvellous, and the more certainly
indicative of the originating and controlling agency of
mind, that while all the planetary movements obey with
perfect regularity one great principle of order, they do so
by describing widely different orbits, and, in the case of
some, pursuing courses that move in opposite directions to
others. Whence should such things be? Not, assuredly,
from any property inherent in the material orbs them-
selves, which know nothing of the laws they exemplify,
or the interests that depend on the order they keep:
no, but solely from the will and power of the infinite and
eternal Being, whose workmanship they are, and whose
purposes they unconsciously fulfil. So wrote Newton
devoutly, as well as nobly, at the close of his incompar-
able work: ‘This beautiful system of sun, planets, and
comets, could have its origin in no other way than by the
counsel and sovereignty of an intelligent and powerful
Being. He governs all things—not as the soul of the
world, but as the Lord of the universe....We know
Him only through His qualities and attributes, and
through the most wise and excellent forms and final
8 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. 1.
causes, which belong to created things; and we admire
Him on account of His perfections; but for His sovereign
lordship, we worship and adore Him;’—thus in the
true spirit of the Psalmist, and as with a solemn halle-
lujah, winding up the mighty demonstration.l
We are informed, in a recent publication by a noble
author,2 that modern science is again returning to this
view of things; returning to it, I suppose, as becoming
conscious of the inadequacy of the maxim of an earlier
time, in respect to creation, ‘That the hypothesis of a
Deity is not needed.’ Speaking of the mystery which
hangs around the idea of force, even of the particular
force which has its seat in our own vitality, he says, ‘If,
then, we know nothing of that kind of force which is so
near to us, and with which our own intelligence is in
such close alliance, much less can we know the ultimate
nature of force in its other forms. It is important to
dwell on this, because both the aversion with which some
men regard the idea of the reign of law, and the triumph
1 On this point, Dr Whewell has some remarks in his ‘Philosophy of the
Inductive Sciences,’ which another great authority in natural science, Sir John
Herschel, has characterized admirable (‘Essays and Addresses,’ p. 239). ‘The
assertion appears to be quite unfounded, that as science advances from point to
point, final causes recede before it, and disappear one after the other. The
principle of design changes its mode of application indeed, but it loses none of
its force. We no longer consider particular facts as produced by special inter-
positions, but we consider design as exhibited in the establishment and adjust-
ment of the laws by which particular facts are produced. We do not look upon
each particular cloud as brought near us that it may drop fatness on our fields;
but the general adaptation of the laws of heat, and air, and moisture, to the
promotion of vegetation, does not become doubtful. We are rather, by the
discovery of the general laws of nature, led into a scene of wider design, of
deeper contrivance, of more comprehensive adjustments. Final causes, if they
appear driven farther from us by such an extension of our views, embrace us
only with a vaster and more majestic circuit; instead of a few threads connect-
ing some detached objects, they become a stupendous network which is wound
round and round the universal frame of things.—Vol. I. p. 635.
2 The Duke of Argyle, ‘Reign of Law,’ p. 122.
LECT. I.] THE ASCENDENCY OF LAW. 9
with which some others hail it, are founded on a notion,
that when we have traced any given phenomena to what
are called natural forces, we have traced them farther
than we really have. We know nothing of the ultimate
nature, or of the ultimate seat of force [that is, know
nothing scientifically]. Science, in the modern doctrine of
the conservation of energy and the convertibility of forces,
is already getting something like a firm hold of the idea,
that all kinds of force are but forms or manifestations of
some central force issuing from some one Fountainhead of
power. Sir John Herschel has not hesitated to say, that
it is but reasonable to regard the force of gravitation as
the direct or indirect result of a consciousness or a will
existing somewhere. And even if we cannot certainly
identify force in all its forms with the direct energies of
one omnipresent and all-pervading will, it is, at least, in
the highest degree unphilosophical to assume the con-
trary; to speak or to think as if the forces of nature were
either independent of, or even separate from, the Creator’s
power.’ In short, natural science, in its investigations
into the forces and movements of the material universe,
finds a limit which it cannot overpass, and in that limit
a felt want of satisfaction, as conscious of the necessity of
a spontaneity, a will, a power to give impulse and direc-
tion to the whole, of which nature itself can give no
information, because lying outside of its province, and
which, if discovered to us at all, must be certified through
a supernatural revelation.
But this is still not the whole of the argument for the
pervading causal connection of God with the works of
nature, and His claim in this respect to our devout recog-
nition of His will as the source of its laws, and His power
as the originator and sustainer of its movements. For,
besides the admirable method and order, the simplicity in
10 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
the midst of endless diversity, which are found to charac-
terize the system of material nature, there is also to be
taken into account the irrepressible impulse in the human
mind to search for these, and the capacity to discern and
appreciate them as marks of the highest intelligence. A
pre-established harmony here discovers itself between the
world of thought within, and the world of material order
and scientific adjustment without, bespeaking their mutual
co-ordination by the wise foresight and plastic energy of
one Supreme Mind. ‘Copernicus1 (it has been remarked),
in the dedication of his work to Pope Paul III., confesses
that he was brought to the discovery of the sun's central
position and of the diurnal motion of the earth, not by
observation or analysis, but by what he calls the feeling
of a want of symmetry in the Ptolemaic system. But
who had told him that there must be symmetry in all the
movements of the celestial bodies, or that complication
was not more sublime than simplicity? Symmetry and
simplicity, before they were discovered by the observer,
were postulated by the philosopher;’ and by him, we
may add, truly postulated, because first existing as ideas
in the Eternal Mind, whose image and reflex man’s is.
So also with Newton: the principle of gravitation, as an
all-embracing law of the planetary system, was postulated
in his mind before he ascertained it to be the law actually
in force throughout the whole, or even any considerable
part of the system—mind in man thus responding to mind
in God, and finding, in the things which appear, the evi-
dence at once of His eternal power and Godhead, and of the
similitude of its own understanding to that of Him by
whom the world has been contrived and ordained.
There is a class of minds which such considerations
cannot reach. They would take a position above them;
1 Max Müller, ‘Lectures on Language,’ p. 19.
LECT. I.] THE ASCENDENCY OF LAW. 11
and adventuring upon what tends to perplex and con-
found, rather than satisfy, the reason, they raise such
questions respecting the Absolute and Infinite, as in a
manner exclude the just and natural conclusions deduced
from the works of creation concerning the Being and
Government of the Creator. But questions of that de-
scription, pressing as they do into a region which tran-
scends all human thought and known analogy, it is pre-
sumption in man to raise, folly to entertain; for ‘man is
born,’ as Goethe well remarked, ‘not to solve the
problems of the universe, but to find out where the
problem for himself begins, and then restrain himself
within the limits of the comprehensible.’ Considered
from this point of view, the reflections which have been
submitted as to the prevalence of natural law in the
general economy of the world of matter, in its relation
to God and its bearing on the religion of the Bible, are
perfectly legitimate; and they might easily be extended
by a diversified application of the principles involved in
them to the arrangements in the natural world, which
stand more closely related to men's individual interests
and responsibilities. But to sum up briefly what relates
to this branch of our subject, there are three leading
characteristics in the teaching of the Bible respecting the
relation of God to the merely natural world, and which,
though they can only in a qualified sense be termed a
revelation of law, yet form, so to speak, the landmarks
which the Bible itself sets up, and the measure of the
liberty it accords to the cultivators of science.
(1.) The first of these is the strict and proper person-
ality of God, as distinct from, and independent of, the
whole or any part of the visible creation. This to its
utmost limits is His workmanship—the theatre which
His hands have reared, and which they still maintain, for
12 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
the outgoing of His perfections and the manifestation of
His glory. As such, therefore, the things belonging to it
are not, and cannot possibly be, a part of His proper self.
However pervaded by His essential presence and divine
energy, they are not ‘the varied God,’ in the natural
sense of the expression. They came into being without
any diminution of His infinite greatness, and so they
may be freely handled, explored, modified, made to
undergo ever so many changes and transformations,
without in the slightest degree trenching on the nature
of Him, who is ‘without variableness or shadow of turn-
ing.’ Such is the doctrine of the Bible—differing from
mere nature-worship, and from polytheism in all its forms,
which, if it does not openly avow, tacitly assumes the
identification of Deity with the world. The Scripture
doctrine of the Creator and creation, of God and the
world, as diverse though closely related factors, leaves
to science its proper field of inquiry and observation, un-
trammelled by any hindrance arising from the view there
exhibited of the Divine nature.
(2.) A second distinguishing feature in the revelations
of the Bible is, that they rather pre-suppose what belongs
to the domain of natural science, than directly interfere
with it. With the exception of the very earliest part of
the sacred records, it is the supernatural—the supernatural
with respect more immediately to moral relations and
results—which may be designated their proper field; and
while in this the supernatural throughout bases itself on
the natural, the natural itself is little more than inci-
dentally referred to, or very briefly indicated. Even in
the account given of the formation of the world and the
natural constitution of things therewith connected, it is
obviously with the design of forming a suitable introduc-
tion to the place of man in the world, his moral relation
14 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
on scientific ground, stand, as a whole, in such striking
accord even now with the established results of science—
exhibiting, by means of a few graphic lines, not merely
the evolution from dark chaos of a world of light, and
order, and beauty, but the gradual ascent also of being
upon earth, from the lowest forms of vegetable and
animal life, up to him, who holds alike of earth and heaven
—at once creation’s head, and the rational image and
vicegerent of the Creator. Here, substantially at least,
we have the progression of modern science; but this com-
bined, in a manner altogether peculiar, with the peerless
dignity and worth of man, as of more account in God’s
sight than the entire world besides of animated being,
yea, than sun, and moon, and stars of light, because
incomparably nearer than them all to the heart of God,
and more closely associated with the moral aims, to which
everything in nature was designed to be subordinate.
Better than all science, it reveals alike man's general place
in nature and his singular relation to God.l
(3.) A third characteristic of Bible teaching in this
connection is the free play it allows to general laws and
natural agencies, or to the operation of cause and effect;
and this, not merely as bearing on simply natural results,
but also as connected with spiritual relations and duties.
Those laws and agencies are of God; as briefly expressed
by Augustine, ‘God’s will constitutes the nature of things’
(Dei voluntas rerum natura est); or more fully by Hooker,2
‘That law, the performance whereof we behold in things
natural, is as it were an authentic or original draft written
in the bosom of God himself, whose Spirit being to exe-
cute the same with every particular nature, every mere
natural agent is only as an instrument created at the
beginning, and ever since the beginning used, to work His
1 See Butler, ‘Analogy,’ P. I. c. 7. 2 ‘Eccl. Polity,’ B. I. c. 3, sec. 4.
LECT. I.] THE ASCENDENCY OF LAW. 15
own will and pleasure withal. Nature, therefore, is nothing
else but God’s instrument.’ Whence the various powers
and faculties of nature, whether in things animate or inani-
mate, her regular course and modes of procedure, are not
supplanted by grace, but are recognised and acted upon
to the full extent that they can be made subservient to
higher purposes. Thus, when in respect to things above
nature, God reveals His mind to men, He does it through
men, and through men not as mere machines unconsciously
obeying a supernatural impulse, but acting in discharge
of their personal obligations and the free exercise of their
individual powers and susceptibilities. So also the
common subject of grace, the ordinary believer, obtains
no warrant as such to set at nought the settled laws and
ordinances of nature, no right to expect aught but mis-
chief if he should contravene their action, or fail to adapt
himself to their mode of operation; and at every step in
his course toward the final goal of his calling, reason,
knowledge, cultivation, wise discretion, and persevering
diligence have their parts to play in securing his safety
and progress, as well as the divine help and internal
agency of the Spirit. It is, therefore, within the boundary-
lines fixed by nature, and in accordance with the prin-
ciples of her constitution, alike in the mental and the
material world, that the work of grace proceeds, though
bringing along with it powers, and influences, and results
which are peculiarly its own. And even as regards the
things done for the believer in the outer field of provi-
dence, and in answer to humble prayer, there may be no
need (for aught we know to the contrary) for miraculous
interference, in the ordinary sense of the term, but only
for wise direction, for timely and fitting adjustment. It
may even be, as Isaac Taylor has said, ‘the great miracle
of providence, that no miracles are needed to accomplish
16 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
its purposes;’ that ‘the materials of the machinery of
providence are all of ordinary quality, while their com-
bination displays nothing less than infinite skill;’ and, at
all events, within this field alone of divine foresight and
gracious interventions through natural agencies, there is in
the hand of God ‘a hidden treasury of boons sufficient for
the incitement of prayer and the reward of humble faith.’l
The three principles or positions now laid down in
respect to God’s operations in nature and providence,
seem to comprise all that is needed for the maintenance
of friendly relations between the religion of the Bible and
the investigations of science; on the one side, ample scope
is left to these investigations, while, on the other, nothing
has been actually established by them which conflicts with
the statements of the Bible interpreted by the principles
we have stated. But undoubtedly there is in them what
cannot be reconciled with that deification of material forces,
which some would identify with strict science—as if every-
thing that took place were the result of the action only
of unconscious law—law working with such rigid, un-
broken continuity of natural order, as to admit of no
break or deviation whatever (such as is implied in miracles),
and no special adaptation to individual cases (as a parti-
cular providence would involve). Both miracles and a
particular providence, within certain limits, and as means
to the attainment of important ends, are postulated and
required in the revelations of the Bible. For if, as it
teaches, there be a personal God, an infinite and eternal
Spirit, distinct from the works of creation, and Himself
the author of the laws by which they are governed—if
also this God sustains the character of moral Governor
in regard to the intelligent part of His creation, and
subordinates everything in His administration to the
1 ‘Natural History of Enthusiasm,’ sec. vi.
LECT. I.] THE ASCENDENCY OF LAW. 17
principles and interests therewith connected—then the
possibility, at least, of miracles and a particular providence
(to say nothing at present of their evidence), can admit of
no reasonable doubt. This does not imply, as the oppo-
nents of revelation not unfrequently assume, the produc-
tion in certain cases of an effect without a cause, or the
emerging of dissimilar consequents from the same ante-
cedents. For, on the supposition in question, the ante-
cedents are no longer the same; the cause which is of
nature has superadded to it a cause which is above nature,
in the material sense—the will and the power of a personal
Deity. We reason here, as in other things, from the human
to the divine. Mind in man is capable of originating a
force, which within definite limits can suspend the laws of
material nature, and control or modify them to its desired
ends. And why, then, should it be thought incredible or
strange, that the central Mind of the universe, by whom
all subsists, should at certain special moments, when the
purposes of His moral government require a new order of
things to be originated, authoritative indications of His
will to be given, or results accomplished unattainable in
the ordinary course of nature, bring into play a force
adequate to the end in view? It is merely supposing the
great primary cause interposing to do in a higher line of
things what finite beings are ever doing in a lower; and
the right, and the power, and the purpose to do it, resolve
themselves (as we have said) into the question, whether
there really be a God, exercising a moral government over
the world, capable for its higher ends of putting forth
acts of supernatural agency—a question which natural
science has no special mission to determine, or peculiar
resources to explicate.1
1 See M'Cosh, ‘Method of Divine Government,’ B. II. cap. i. sec. 7. And
for an admirable and conclusive exposure of the views of the chief opponents
18 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
The subject of a particular providence so far differs
from that of miraculous action, that, to a large extent,
its requirements may be met through the operation of
merely instrumental causes, fitly disposed and arranged
by Divine wisdom to suit the ever-varying conditions of
individual man. To have respect to the individual in
His method of government cannot be regarded as less
in the present day of all miraculous agency, even in creation and intelligent
design as connected with the works of nature—namely, the advocates of natural
selection and progressive development—see particularly ‘The Darwinian Theory
of Development examined by a Cambridge Graduate.’ It is there stated, as a
remarkable thing, that this theory, which professes to be based on scientific
grounds, yet expresses itself in the form of a creed: the words ‘We must
believe,’ ‘I have no difficulty in believing,’ etc., are perpetually recurring, and,
in fact, form the necessary links in the chain of so-called deductions. Hence,
while setting out with the object of avoiding the miraculous, the end is not
attained. ‘In the old method, the great physiologists take it for granted that
their researches can only reach a certain point, beyond which they cannot
penetrate; there they come to the inexplicable; and they believe that barrier
to be the Creator’s power, which they leave at a respectful distance. This,
according to the feelings of the ancients, was “the veil of nature which no
mortal hand had ever withdrawn,” and, as they approached it, they felt and
spoke of it with reverence. Now, the new method is to discard the belief in
a Creator, to reject the omniscience and omnipotence of a Maker of all things,
to charge us who believe in it with endeavouring to conceal our ignorance by
an imposing form of words; and to undertake to explain the origin of all
forms of life by another and a totally different hypothesis. What, then, is the
result? A long list of new and doubtful assertions, some of them of surpassing
novelty and wildness, and all of them unaccompanied by proof, but proposed
as points of belief. The marvellous in the old method is in one point only,
and that, for the most part, more implied than expressed—the belief in a para-
mount Intellect ordaining life and providing for its success. The marvellous
in the new way is a vast assemblage of prodigies, strange and unheard-of events
and circumstances that cannot be confirmed by any authentic evidence, and
which, indeed, are out of the reach of evidence—a throng of aëry dreams and
phantasies, evoked by the imagination, which we are called on to believe as
realities, as it is impossible to prove that they are so’ (p. 355). A distinguished
naturalist has said, ‘No one who has advanced so far in philosophy as to have
thought of one thing in relation to another, will ever be satisfied with laws
which had no author, works which had no maker, and co-ordinations which
had no designer’ (Phillips, ‘Life on Earth’). The development school vainly try
to satisfy themselves by making enormous drafts on their imagination and faith.
LECT. I.] THE ASCENDENCY OF LAW. 19
consistent with the nature of an all-wise and omnipotent
Being, than to restrain His working within the bounds of
general laws; and nature itself is a witness to the infinite
minuteness of the care and oversight of which even the
smallest forms in the animated creation are the object.
Besides, in a vast multitude of instances, probably in by
far the greater number of what constitute special acts of
providence for individuals, it is not the law of cause and
effect in material nature that is interfered with, but the
operations of mind that are controlled—the Eternal Spirit
directly, or by some appropriate ministry, touching the
springs of thought and feeling in different bosoms, so
as to bring the resolves and procedure of one to bear
upon the condition and circumstances of another, and
work out the results which need to be accomplished. In
the ordinary affairs of life, where secular ends alone are
concerned, we see what a complicated network of mutual
interconnection and specific influences is formed, by the
movements of mind transmitted from one person to
another, and the same we can readily conceive to exist
in relation to spiritual ends; in this case, indeed, even
more varied and far-reaching, as the ends to be secured
are of a higher kind, and there is the action of minds
from the heavenly places coming in aid of the move-
ments which originate upon earth. But without dilating
further, the principle of the whole matter in this, as well
as the previous aspect of it, is embodied in another grand
utterance of Newton’s, in which, after describing God as
a being or substance, ‘one, simple, indivisible, living,
and life-giving, everywhere and necessarily existing,’ etc.,
it is added, in these remarkable words, ‘perceiving and
governing all things by His essential presence, and con-
stantly co-operating with all things, according to fixed
laws as the foundation and cause of all nature, except
20 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
when it is good to act otherwise (nisi ubi aliter agere
bonum est):’ the Will of the great Sovereign of the
universe being thus placed above every impressed law
and instrumental cause of nature, and conceived free to
adopt other and more peculiar lines of action as the higher
ends of His government might require.
II. We turn now from the physical to the moral and
religious sphere, the one with which in the present dis-
cussion we have more especially to do; and in doing so
we pass into quite another region as regards the tendency
of thought in the current literature and philosophy of the
day. For here, undoubtedly, the disposition with many
is to fall as much short of the teaching of Scripture in
respect to the supremacy of law, as in the other depart-
ment to go beyond it. But opinions on the subject are
really so diverse, they differ so much both in respect to
the forms they assume and the grounds on which they
are based, that it is not quite easy in a brief space, and
impossible without some detail, to give a distinct repre-
sentation of them.
(1.) At the farthest remove from the Scriptural view
stand the advocates of materialism—those who would
merge mind and matter ultimately into one mass, who
would trace all mental phenomena to sensations, and
account for everything that takes place by means of the
affinities, combinations, and inherent properties of matter.
In such a philosophy there is room for law only in the
physical sense, and for such progress or civilization as may
arise from a more perfect acquaintance therewith, and a
more skilful use or adaptation of it to the employments
and purposes of life. The personality of God, as a living,
eternal Spirit, cannot be entertained; and, of course,
LECT. I.] CURRENT THEORIES ON LAW. 21
responsibility in the higher sense, as involving subjection
to moral government, and the establishment of a Divine
moral order, can have no place. For, mind is but a
species of cerebral development; thought or desire but
an action of the brain; man himself but the most perfectly
developed form of organic being, the highest type in the
scale of nature’s ascending series of productions, whose
part is fulfilled in doing what is fitted to secure a health-
ful organization, and provide for himself the best condi-
tions possible of social order and earthly wellbeing. But,
to say nothing of the scheme in other respects, looking at
it simply with reference to the religion and morality of
the Bible, it plainly ignores the foundation on which
these may be said to rest; namely, the moral elements in
man’s constitution, or the phenomena of conscience, which
are just as real as those belonging to the physical world,
and in their nature immensely more important. In so
doing, it gives the lie to our profoundest convictions, and
loses sight of the higher, the more ennobling qualities of
our nature, indeed would reduce man very much to the
condition of a child and creature of fate—capable, indeed,
of being influenced by sensual desires, prudential motives,
and utilitarian considerations, but not called to aim at
conformity to any absolute rule of right and wrong, or to
recognise as binding a common standard of duty. Such
an idea is strongly repudiated by writers of this school;
each man, it is contended, has a right or ‘just claim to
carry on his life in his own way,’ ‘his own mode of laying
out his existence is the best, not because it is the best in
itself, but because it is his own mode;’ hence, on the
other side, Calvinism, which appears to be taken as
another name for evangelical Christianity, is decried as
comprising all the good of which humanity is capable in
22 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
obedience, and prescribing a way of duty which shall be
essentially the same for all.l
(2.) Formally antagonistic to this sensational or mate-
rialistic school—occupying, one might say, the opposite
pole of thought in respect to moral law, yet not less
opposed to any objective revelation of law—is the view of
the idealists, or, as a portion of them at least are some-
times called, the ideal pantheists. With them, mind and
God are the two great ideas that are to rule all; God
first, indeed, whether as the personal or ideal centre of
the vital forces that work, and the fundamental principles
that should prevail throughout the moral universe; but
also mind in man as the exemplar of God, the exponent
of the Divine, and the medium through which it comes
into realization. Man, accordingly, by the very constitu-
tion of his being, is as a God to himself; or, in the lan-
guage of one who, more perhaps than any other, may be
regarded as the founder of the school, ‘Man, as surely
as he is a rational being, is the end of his own existence;
he does not exist to the end that something else may be,
but he exists absolutely for his own sake; his being is its
own ultimate object.’ Consequently, ‘all should proceed
from his own simple personality,’ and should be deter-
mined by what is within, not by a regard to what is
external to himself, though this latter element will
usually more or less prevail, and bring on a sort of con-
1 J. S. Mill ‘On Liberty,’ ch. iii. In referring to Mr Mill, we certainly take
one of the less extreme, as well as most respectable and able of the advocates of
a materialistic philosophy—one, too, who in his work on Utilitarianism has
laboured hard to make up, in a moral respect, for the inherent defects of his
system. But there still is, as Dr M’Cosh has shown ( ‘Examination of Mill’s
Philosophy,’ ch. xx.), the fundamental want of moral law, the impossibility of
giving any satisfactory account of the ideas of moral desert and personal obliga-
tion, and such loose, uncertain drawing of the boundary lines between moral
good and evil, as leaves each man, to a large extent, the framer of his own
moral standard.
LECT. I.] CURRENT THEORIES ON LAW. 23
tradiction, empirically or as matter of fact, to his proper
self. But he should be determined by nothing foreign,
and ‘the fundamental principle of morality may be ex-
pressed in such a formula as this, “So act, that thou
mayest look upon the dictate of thy will as an eternal
law to thyself.”’l Thus the Divine becomes essentially
one with the human; the law for the universe is to be
got at through the insight and monitions of the indivi-
dual, especially of such individuals as have a higher range
of thought than their fellow-men; the heroes of humanity
are, in a qualified sense, its legislators. ‘What,’ asks
Carlyle,2 ‘is this law of the universe, or law made by
God? Men at one time read it in their Bible. In many
bibles, books, and authentic symbols and monitions of
nature, and the world (of fact), there are still some clear
indications towards it. Most important it is, that men
do, and in some way, get to see it a little. And if no
man could now see it by any bible, there is written in
the heart of every man an authentic copy of it, direct from
Heaven itself: there, if he have learnt to decipher
Heaven's writing, and can read the sacred oracles, every
born man may find some copy of it.’ An element of
truth, doubtless, is in such utterances—a most important
element, which Scripture also recognises—but inter-
mingled with what is entirely alien to the spirit and
teaching of Scripture. For, it proceeds on the supposition
of man being still in his normal state, and as such per-
fectly capable, by the insight of his own rational and
moral nature, to acquaint himself with all moral truth
and duty. The inner consciousness of man is entitled to
create for itself a morality, and a religion (if it should
deem such a thing worthy of creation) ; it is, in effect,
deified—though itself, as every one knows, to a large
1 Fichte, ‘Vocation of Man.’ 2 ‘Latter Day Pamphlets,’ No. II.
24 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
extent the creature of circumstances. And thus all takes
a pantheistic direction—the Divine is dragged down to a
level with the human, made to coalesce with it, instead
of the human (according to the Scriptural scheme) being
informed by and elevated to the Divine.l And the general
result, in so far as such idealism prevails, is obviously to
shut men up to ‘measureless content’ with themselves,
and dispose them to resist the dictation of any external
authority or revelation whatever. This result is beyond
doubt already reached with considerable numbers among
the educated classes, and is also pressing through manifold
channels of influence into the church! For it is of this
that the historian of rationalism speaks when he says,2
‘The tendency of religious thought in the present day is
all in one direction, towards the identification of the
Bible and conscience. Generation after generation the
power of the moral faculty becomes more absolute, the
doctrines that oppose it wane and vanish, and the various
elements of theology are absorbed and recast by its in-
fluence.’ The representation is plausibly made, and only
when taken in its connection is its full import seen; for
the meaning is, that the identification in question pro-
ceeds, not from the conscience finding its enlightenment
in the Bible, but from the Bible being made to speak in
accordance with the enlightenment of conscience. The
intellectual and moral idealism of the age, if still holding
by the Bible, reads this in its own light, and throws into
the background whatever it disrelishes or repudiates.
(3.) This species of idealism—allying itself with the
Bible, though sprung from philosophy, and in itself
naturally tending to pantheism—has its representatives
in the Christian church, especially among the class whose
1 See Morell, ‘Hist. of Modern Philosophy,’ Vol II. p. 611.
2 Lecky's ‘Hist. of Rationalism,’ Vol I. p. 384.
LECT. I.] CURRENT THEORIES ON LAW. 25
tastes lie more in literature than in theology. Of culti-
vated minds and refined moral sentiments, such persons
readily acknowledge the ascendency of law in the govern-
ment of God, but, in accordance with their idealism, it is
law in a somewhat ethereal sense, having little to do with
definite rules or external revelations, recognised merely
in a kind of general obligation to exercise certain feelings,
emotions, or principles of action. Hence in the same
writers you will find law at once exalted and depreciated;
at one time it appears to be everything, at another nothing.
‘This universe,’ says a religious idealist of the class now
referred to,l ‘is governed by laws. At the bottom of
everything here there is law. Things are in this way and
not that; we call that a law or a condition. All depart-
ments have their own laws. By submission to them you
make them your own.’ And still more strongly in another
place, adopting the very style of the pantheistic idealists,2
‘I think a great deal of law. Law rules Deity, and its
awful majesty is above individual happiness. This is
what Kant calls the “categorical imperative;” that is, a
sense of duty which commands categorically or absolutely
—not saying, “It is better,” but “Thou shalt.” Why?
Because “Thou shalt”—that is all. It is not best to do
right, thou must do right; and the conscience that feels
that, and in that way, is the nearest to divine humanity.’
But in other passages language equally decided is used
in disparagement of anything in the moral or spiritual
sphere carrying the form of law. Nothing now must rest,
we are told, on enactment; if necessary, it is not on that
account, ‘not because it is commanded; but it is com-
manded because it is necessary’3—hence binding on the
1 Robertson of Brighton, ‘Sermons,’ 2d Series, p. 114.
2 ‘Life and Letters,’ Vol. I. p. 292.
3 ‘Life,’ in a Letter, October 24, 1849.
26 INTRODUCTORY [LECT. I.
conscience only so far as it is perceived to be necessary.
And again, professing to give the drift of St Paul’s
admonitions to the Galatians respecting observance, it is
said,l ‘All forms and modes of particularizing the Chris-
tian life he reckoned as bondage under the elements or
alphabet of the law;’ so that, though the Christian life
might, if it saw fit, find a suitable expression for itself
in any particular observance, this could be defended ‘on
the ground of wise and Christian expediency alone, and
could not be placed on the ground of a Divine statute or
command.’ Professor Jowett seems to carry the idealizing
a little further; he thinks that, under the Old Testament
itself, the period emphatically of law, there is evidence of
its adoption by the more thoughtful and intelligent of the
covenant people. The term ‘law,’ he says, is ambiguous
in Scripture;2 ‘it is so in the Old Testament itself. In
the prophecies and psalms, as well as in the writings of
St Paul, the law is in a great measure ideal. When the
Psalmist spoke of “meditating in the law of the Lord,” he
was not thinking of the five books of Moses. The law
which he delighted to contemplate was not written down
(as well might we imagine that the Platonic idea was a
treatise on philosophy); it was the will of God, the truth
of God, the justice and holiness of God. In later ages the
same feelings began to gather around the volume of the
law itself. The law was ideal still’—though he admits
that ‘with this idealism were combined the reference to
its words, and the literal enforcement of its precepts.’
A strange sort of idealism, surely, which could not sepa-
rate itself from the concrete or actual, and continued
looking to this for the material alike of its study and
its observance! But it is the view only we at pre-
sent notice, the form of thought itself respecting the law,
1 ‘Sermons,’ 2d Series, p. 184. 2 ‘Epistles of St Paul,’ II. p. 501.
LECT. I.] CURRENT THEORIES ON LAW. 27
not its consistence either with itself or with the statements
of Scripture. It clearly enough indicates how idealism
has been influencing the minds of Christian writers in
this direction, and how, along with much that is sound,
pure, and sometimes elevating in the sentiments they
utter, there is also a certain laxity as to particular things,
an asserted superiority for the individual over law in
respect to everything like explicit rules and enactments.
(4.) There is, however, a class of Christian writers,
more properly theological and also of a somewhat realistic
character, who so far concur with the idealists, that they
maintain the freedom of the Christian from obligation to
the law distinctively so called—the law in that sense is
abolished by the Gospel of Christ, or, as sometimes put,
dead and buried in His grave; but only that a new and
higher law might come in its place, the law of Gospel life
and liberty. This view is what in theological language
bears the name of Neonomianism—that is, the doctrine
of a new law, in some respects differing from or opposed
to the old—a law of principles rather than of precepts,
especially the great principles of faith and love, which
it conceives to be carried now higher than before. The
view is by no means of recent origin; it was formally
propounded shortly after the Reformation, was adopted
by the Socinians as a distinguishing part of their system,
and with certain unimportant variations has often been
set forth afresh in later times.1 Dr Whately puts it thus:
The law as revealed in the Old Testament bears on the
face of it that the whole of its precepts, moral as well as
1 Zanchius, who belongs to the Reformation era, states expressly that we
have nothing to do with the moral precepts of Moses, except in so far as they
agree with the common law of nature, and are confirmed by Christ (Op. IV.
1. i c. 11). To the same effect, Musculus, ‘De Abrogatione Legis Mos.;’ and
more recently, Knapp, ‘Christian Theology,’ sec. 119, ‘Bialloblotzky, De
Abrog. L. Mos.,’ &c.
28 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
ceremonial, ‘were intended for the Israelites exclusively;’
therefore ‘they could not by their own authority be
binding on Christians,’ and are by the apostle in explicit
terms denied to be binding on them, hence as regards
them abolished.1 ‘But, on the other hand, the natural
principles of morality which (among other things) it
inculcates, are from their own character of universal
obligation; so that Christians are bound to the observance
of those commandments which are called moral—not,
however, because they are commandments of the Mosaic
law, ‘but because they are moral.’ The moral law, as
written upon man’s heart, remains still, as ever, authori-
tative and binding, and ‘is by the Gospel placed on higher
grounds. Instead of precise rules, it furnishes sublime
principles of conduct, leaving the Christian to apply these,
according to his own discretion, to each case that may
arise.’ In a somewhat modified form, the same view has
been presented after this manner: ‘Under the Christian
dispensation, the law in its outward and limited form—in
its form as given to Israel—has passed away; but the
substance, the principles, of the law remain. Would we
be free from that substance, these principles must be
written on our hearts. If they are not so written, we
ourselves reduce them to an outward and commanding
law, which, not being obeyed, brings bondage with it.’
The law, therefore, in one sense has passed away, in
another not; it is improper to speak of it as dead and
buried in the grave of Christ, for in its great principles it
never dies; but ‘the outward, the limited, the command-
ing form of it may be said to be dead;’ or, as otherwise
expressed, ‘that law in a particular and local form has
been taken up and widened out into a higher law, in Him
who not only exhibits it in its most perfect form, but gives
1 ‘Essay on the Abolition of the Law,’ secs. 1, 2.
LECT. I.] CURRENT THEORIES ON LAW. 29
the strength in which alone we can obey.’l The differ-
ence between this and the other mode of representation is
evidently not material: in both alike the revelation of law
in the Old Testament is held to be not directly, and in
its letter, binding upon Christians; but its essential prin-
ciples, which constitute the basis of all morality, being
recognised and embraced in the Gospel, developed also to
nobler results and enforced by higher motives, these are
binding, and if not strictly law, at least in the stead of
law, and more effectively serving its interests.
( 5.) A still farther development in the same direction
is what is known under the name of Antinomianism—
antithesis to the law, in the sense of formal opposition to
it, as from its very nature destructive of what is good for
us in our present state—an occasion only and instrument
of death. It is the view of men, evangelical indeed, but
partial and extreme in their evangelism—who, in their
zeal to magnify the grace of the Gospel, lay stress only
upon a class of expressions which unfold its riches and its
triumphs, as contrasted with the law’s impotence in itself,
yea, with the terror and condemnation produced by it,
and silently overlook, or deprive of their proper force,
another class, which exhibit law in living fellowship with
grace—joint factors in the accomplishment of the same
blessed results. But it is right to add, the spirit and
design with which this is done differ widely in the hands
of different persons. Some so magnify grace in order to
get their consciences at ease respecting the claims of
holiness, and vindicate for themselves a liberty to sin
that grace may abound—or, which is even worse, deny
that anything they do can have the character of sin,
because they are through grace released from the demands
of law, and so cannot sin. These are Antinomians of the
1 Milligan on ‘The Decalogue and the Lord’s Day,’ pp. 96, 108, 111.
30 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
grosser kind, who have not particular texts merely of
the Bible, but its whole tenor and spirit against them.
Others, however, and these the only representatives of
the idea who in present times can be regarded as having
an outstanding existence, are advocates of holiness after
the example and teaching of Christ. They are ready to
say, ‘Conformity to the Divine will, and that as obedi-
ence to commandments, is alike the joy and the duty of
the renewed mind. Some are afraid of the word obedi-
ence, as if it would weaken love and the idea of a new
creation. Scripture is not. Obedience and keeping the
commandments of one we love is the proof of that love,
and the delight of the new creature. Did I do all right,
and not do it in obedience, I should do nothing right,
because my true relationship and heart-reference to God
would be left out. This is love, that we keep His com-
mandments.’l So far excellent; but then these com-
mandments are not found in the revelation of law,
distinctively so called. The law, it is held, had a specific
character and aim, from which it cannot be dissociated,
and which makes it for all time the minister of evil.
‘It is a principle of dealing with men which necessarily
destroys and condemns them. This is the way (the
writer continues) the Spirit of God uses law in contrast
with Christ, and never in Christian teaching puts men
under it. Nor does Scripture ever think of saying, You
are not under the law in one way, but you are in another;
you are not for justification, but you are for a rule of life.
It declares, You are not under law, but under grace; and
if you are under law, you are condemned and under a
curse. How is that obligatory which a man is not under
—from which he is delivered?’2 Antinomianism of this
description—distinguishing between the teaching or com-
1 Darby ‘On the Law,’ pp. 3, 4. 2 Ibid. p. 4.
LECT. I.] CURRENT THEORIES ON LAW. 31
mandments of Christ and the commandments of the law,
holding the one to be binding on the conscience of Chris-
tians and the other not—is plainly but partial Antino-
mianism; it does not, indeed, essentially differ from
Neonomianism, since law only as connected with the
earlier dispensation is repudiated, while it is received as
embodying the principles of Christian morality, and asso-
ciated with the life and power of the Spirit of Christ.
(6.) Still it is clear, from this brief review, that there
is a very considerable diversity of opinion on the subject
of law, in a moral or spiritual respect, even among those
who are agreed in asserting our freedom from its re-
straints and obligations in the more imperative form;
and from not a little of the philosophic, and much of
the current secular literature of the age, a tendency is
continually flowing into the church, which is impatient
of anything in the name of moral or religious obligation,
beyond the general claims of rectitude and benevolence.
In respect to everything besides, the individual is held
to have an absolute right to judge for himself. It can-
not, therefore, appear otherwise than an important line
of inquiry, and one specially called for by the present
aspect of things, what place does law hold in the revela-
tions of Scripture? How far has it varied in amount of
requirement or form of obligation, at different periods of
the Divine administration? What was the nature of
the change effected in regard to it, or to our relation to
it, by the appearance and work of Christ? It is of the
more importance that such questions should receive a
a thoughtful and considerate examination, as the confes-
sional position of most churches, Reformed as well as
Catholic, is against the tendency now described, and on
the side of law, in the stricter sense of the term, having
still a commanding power on the consciences of men.
32 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
At the farthest extreme in this direction stands the
Roman Catholic church, which holds Christ to be a
legislator in the same sense as Moses was, and deems
itself entitled by Divine right to bind enactments of
moral and religious duty upon the consciences of its
members, similar in kind, and greatly more numerous
and exacting in the things required by them, than those
imposed by the legislation of Moses. There are sections
also of the Protestant church, and parties of considerable
extent and influence in particular churches, who have
ever endeavoured to find, either by direct imposition, or
by analogical reasonings and necessary implication, autho-
rity in Scripture for a large amount of positive law as
well as moral precept, to be received and acted on by
the Christian church. And from the opposite quarter,
we may say, of the theological heavens, there has recently
been given a representation of Christ, in which the
strongest emphasis is laid on His legislative character.
Speaking of the first formation of the Christian society,
the author of ‘Ecce Homo’ says,l ‘Those who gathered
round Christ did in the first place contract an obliga-
tion of personal loyalty to Him. On the ground of this
loyalty He proceeded to form a society, and to promulgate
an elaborate legislation, comprising and intimately con-
nected with certain declarations, authoritatively delivered,
concerning the nature of God, the relation of man to Him,
and the invisible world. In doing so He assumed the
part of a second Moses;’ and he goes on to indicate the
specific character of the legislation, and the sanctions
under which it was established, both materially differing
from the Mosaic. Yet this seems again virtually recalled
by other representations, in which the New Testament is
declared to be ‘not the Christian law;’2 not ‘the pre-
1 P. 80. 2 P. 202.
LECT. I.] CURRENT THEORIES ON LAW. 33
cepts of apostles,’ not even ‘the special commands of
Christ.’ ‘The enthusiasm of humanity in Christianity is
their only law;’ ‘what it dictates, and that alone, is law
for the Christian.’ But apart from this, which can only
be set down to prevailing arbitrariness and uncertainty
on the subject, the Protestant churches generally stand
committed to the belief of the moral law in the Old
Testament as in substance the same with that in the
New, and from its very nature limited to no age or
country, but of perpetual and universal obligation. They
have ever looked to the Decalogue as the grand summary
of moral obligation, under which all duty to God and man
may be comprised. Is this the true Scriptural position?
or in what manner, and to what extent, should it be
modified?
34 RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. [LECT. II.
LECTURE II.
THE RELATION OF MAN AT CREATION TO MORAL LAW—HOW FAR
OR IN WHAT RESPECTS THE LAW IN ITS PRINCIPLES WAS MADE
KNOWN TO HIM—THE GRAND TEST OF HIS RECTITUDE, AND HIS
FAILURE UNDER IT.
WHEN opening the sacred volume for the purpose of
ascertaining its revelations of Divine law, it appears
at first sight somewhat strange that so little should be
found of this in the earlier parts of Scripture, and that
what is emphatically called THE LAW did not come into
formal existence till greatly more than half the world’s
history between Adam and Christ had run its course.
‘The law came by Moses.1 The generations of God’s
people that preceded this era are represented as living
under promise rather than under law, and the covenant of
promise—that, namely, made with Abraham—in the
order of the Divine dispensations took precedence of the
law by four hundred and thirty years.2 Yet it is clear
from what is elsewhere said, that though not under law
in one sense, those earlier generations were under it in
another; for they were throughout generations of sinful
men, subject to disease and death on account of sin, and
sin is but the transgression of law; ‘where no law is,
there is no transgression.’3 So that when the apostle
again speaks of certain portions of mankind not having
the law, of their sinning without law, and perishing
without law, 4 he can only mean that they were without
1 John i. 17. 2Gal. iii. 17.
3 Rom. v. 12, 13 ; iv. 15; vi. 2, 3. 4 Rom. ii 12, 14.
LECT. II.] RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. 35
the formal revelation of law, which had been given through
Moses to the covenant-people, while still, by the very
constitution of their beings, they stood under the bonds
of law, and by their relation to these would be justified
or condemned. But this plainly carries us up to the
very beginnings of the human family; for as our first
parents, though created altogether good, sinned against
God, and through sinning lost their proper heritage of
life and blessing, their original standing must have been
amid the obligations of law. And the question which
presses on us at the outset—the first in order in the line
of investigation that lies before us, and one on the right
determination of which not a little depends for the correct-
ness of future conclusions—is, what was the nature of the
law associated with man’s original state? and how far
or in what respects, did it possess the character of a
revelation?1
I. The answer to such questions must be sought,
primarily at least, in something else than what in the
primeval records carries the formal aspect of law—the
commands, namely, given to our first parents respecting
their place and conduct toward the earth generally, or
the select region they more peculiarly occupied; for it is
remarkable that these are in themselves of a merely
outward and positive nature—positive, I mean, as contra-
distinguished from moral; so that, in their bearing on
man’s original probation, they could only have been
intended to form the occasions and tests of moral obedi-
1 In discussing this subject, it will be understood that I take for granted the
truth of the history in Genesis i.-iii., and the fact of man’s creation in a state
of manhood, ripeness, and perfection. The impossibility of accounting for the
existence and propagation of the human race otherwise, has been often demon-
strated. See Dr Moore’s ‘First Man and his Place in Creation,’ and the autho-
rities there referred to.
36 RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. [LECT. II.
ence, not its proper ground or principle. Underneath
those commands, and pre-supposed by them, there must
have been certain fundamental elements of moral obliga-
tion in the very make and constitution of man—in his
moral nature, to which such commands addressed them-
selves, and which must remain, indeed, for all time the
real basis of whatever can be justly exacted of man, or
is actually due by him in moral and religious duty. In
applying ourselves, therefore, to consider what in this
respect is written of man’s original state, we have to do
with what, in its more essential features, relates not to
the first merely, but to every stage of human history—
with what must be recognised by every law that is really
Divine, and to which it must stand in fitting adaptation.
The notice mainly to be considered we find in that part
of the history of creation, which tells us with marked
precision and emphasis of the Divine mould after which
his being was fashioned: ‘Let us make man,’ it was said
by God, after the inferior creatures had been formed each
after their kind, ‘in our image, after our likeness (or
similitude).’ And the purpose being accomplished, it is
added, ‘So God created man in His own image, in the
image of God created He him’—the rational offspring,
therefore, as well as the workmanship of Deity, a repre-
sentation in finite form and under creaturely limitations
of the invisible God. That the likeness had respect to
the soul, not to the body of man (except in so far as this is
the organ of the soul and its proper instrument of working)
cannot be doubted; for the God who is a Spirit could find
only in the spiritual part of man’s complex being a subject
capable of having imparted to it the characteristics of His
own image. Nor could the dominion with which man was
invested over the fulness of the world and its living
creaturehood, be regarded as more than the mere con-
LECT. II.] RELATION OF MAN'TO MORAL LAW. 37
sequence and sign of the Divine likeness after which man
was constituted, not the likeness itself; for this mani-
festly pointed to the distinction of his nature, not to
some prerogative merely, or incidental accompaniment of
his position. Holding, then, that the likeness or image
of God, in which man was made, is to be understood of
his intellectual and moral nature, what light, we have
now to ask, does it furnish in respect to the line of
inquiry with which we are engaged? What does it
import of the requirements of law, or the bonds of moral
obligation?
Undoubtedly, as the primary element in this idea must
be placed the intellect, or rational nature of the soul in
man; the power or capacity of mind, which enabled him
in discernment to rise above the impressions of sense, and
in action to follow the guidance of an intelligent aim or pur-
pose, instead of obeying the blind promptings of appetite
or instinct. Without such a faculty, there had been want-
ing the essential ground of moral obligation; man could
not have been the subject either of praise or of blame;
for he should have been incapable, as the inferior animals
universally are, of so distinguishing between the true
and the false, the right and the wrong, and so appreciat-
ing the reasons which ought to make the one rather than
the other the object of one’s desire and choice, as to
render him morally responsible for his conduct. In God,
we need scarcely say, this property exists in absolute
perfection; He has command over all the treasures of
wisdom and knowledge—ever seeing things as they really
are, and with unerring precision selecting, out of number-
less conceivable plans, that which is the best adapted to
accomplish His end. And made as man was, in this
respect, after the image of God, we cannot conceive of him
otherwise than as endowed with an understanding to
38 RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. [LECT. II.
know everything, either in the world around him or his
own relation to it, which might be required to fit him
for accomplishing, without failure or imperfection, the
destination he had to fill, and secure the good which
he was capable of attaining. How far, as subservient to
this end, the discerning and reasoning faculty in un-
fallen man might actually reach, we want the materials
for enabling us to ascertain; but in the few notices given
of him we see the free exercise of that faculty in ways
perfectly natural to him, and indicative of its sufficiency
for his place and calling in creation. The Lord brought, it
is said, the inferior creatures around him—those, no doubt,
belonging to the paradisiacal region—‘to see what he
would call them; and whatsoever Adam called every
creature, that was the name of it.’1 The name, we are
to understand, according to the usual phraseology of
Scripture, was expressive of the nature or distinctive
properties of the subject; so that to represent Adam as
giving names to the different creatures was all one with
saying, that he had intelligently scanned their respective
natures, and knew how to discriminate, not merely
between them and himself, but also between one creature
and another. So, again, when a fitting partner had been
formed out of his person and placed before him, he was
able, by the same discerning faculty, to perceive her like-
ness and adaptation to himself, to recognise also the
kindredness of her nature to his own—as ‘bone of his
bones, and flesh of his flesh’—and to bestow on her a
name that should fitly express this oneness of nature and
closeness of relationship (isha, woman; from ish, man).
These, of course, are but specimens, yet enough to shew
the existence of the faculty, and the manner of its exer-
cise, as qualifying him—not, indeed, to search into all
1 Gen. ii. 19.
LECT. II.] RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. 39
mysteries, or bring him acquainted with the principles of
universal truth (of which nothing is hinted)—but to know
the relations and properties of things so far as he had
personally to do with them, or as was required to guide
him with wisdom and discretion amid the affairs of life.
To this extent the natural intelligence of Adam bore the
image of his Maker’s.l
The rational or intellectual part of man’s nature, how-
ever, though entitled to be placed first in the character-
istics that constitute the image of God (for without this
there could be no free, intelligent, or responsible action)
does not of itself bring us into the sphere of the morally
good, or involve the obligation to act according to the
principles of eternal rectitude. For this there must be a
will to choose, as well as a reason to understand—a will
1 This view of man's original state in an intellectual respect, while it is
utterly opposed to the so-called philosophic theory of the savage mode of life,
with all its ignorance and barbarity, having been the original one for mankind,
is at the same time free from the extravagance which has appeared in the de-
scription given by so-called divines of the intellectual attainments and scientific
insight of Adam—as if all knowledge, even of a natural kind, had been neces-
sary to his perfection, as the Image of God! Thomas Aquinas argues,* that if
he knew the natures of all animals, he must by parity of reason have had the
knowledge of all other things; and that, as the perfect precedes the imperfect,
and the first man being perfect must have had the ability to instruct his pos-
terity in all that they should know, so he must have himself known ‘whatever
things men in a natural way can know.’ Protestant writers have occasionally,
though certainly not as a class, carried the matter as far. And, as if such
innate apprehension of all natural knowledge, and proportionate skill in the
application of it to the arts and usages of life, were necessarily involved in the
Scriptural account of man’s original state, geologists, in the interest of their
own theories, have not failed to urge, that, with such ‘inspired knowledge,’† the
remains should be found of the finest works of art in the remotest ages, ‘lines
of buried railways, or electric telegraphs,’ &c. It is enough to say, that no
enlightened theologian would ever ascribe such a reach of knowledge to
primeval man, and that what he did possess soon became clouded and disturbed
by sin.
____________________________________________________________
* Summa, P. I. Quaest. 94, art. 3. † Sir G. Lyell, on ‘The Antiquity of Man,’ p. 378.
40 RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. [LECT. II.
perfectly free in its movements, having the light of reason
to direct it to the good, but under no constraining force
to obey the direction; in other words, with the power to
choose aright conformably to the truth of things, the
power also of choosing amiss, in opposition to the truth.
This liberty of choice, necessary from the very nature of
things to constitute man a subject of moral government,
was distinctly recognised by God in the scope given to
Adam to exercise the gifts and use the privileges con-
ferred on him, limited only by what was due to his place
and calling in creation. It was more especially recognised
in the permission accorded to him to partake freely of
the productions of the garden, to partake even of the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil, though with a stern
prohibition and threatening to deter him from such a
misuse of his freedom. But the will in its choice is just
the index of the nature; it is the expression of the pre-
vailing bent of the soul; and coupled as it was in Adam
with a spiritual nature untainted with evil, the reflex of
His who is the supremely wise and good, there could not
but be associated with it an instinctive desire to exercise
it aright,—a profound, innate conviction that what was
perceived to be good should carry it, as by the force of
an imperative law, over whatever else might solicit his
regard; resembling herein the Divine Author of his
existence, whose very being ‘is a kind of law to His
working, since the perfection which God is gives perfec-
tion to what He does.’l Yet, while thus bearing a
resemblance to God, there still was an essential differ-
ence. For in man’s case all was bounded by creaturely
limitations; and while God never can, from the infinite
perfection of His being, do otherwise than choose with
absolute and unerring rectitude, man with his finite
1 Hooker, ‘Eccl. Polity,’ B. I. c. 2.
LECT. II.] RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. 41
nature and his call to work amid circumstances and con-
ditions imposed on him from without, could have no
natural security for such unfailing rectitude of will; a
diversity might possibly arise between what should have
been, and what actually was, willed and done.
These, then, are the essential characteristics of the
image of God, in which man was made—first, the noble
faculty of reason as the lamp of the soul to search into
and know the truth of things; then the will ready at the
call of reason, with the liberty and the power to choose
according to the light thus furnished; and, finally, the
pure moral nature prompting and disposing the will so to
choose. Blessedness and immortality have by some been
also included in the idea. And undoubtedly they are
inseparable accompaniments of the Divine nature, but
rather as results flowing from the perpetual exercise of its
inherent powers and glorious perfections, than qualities
possessed apart—hence in man suspended on the rightful
employment of the gifts and prerogatives committed to
him. Blessed and immortal life was to be his portion if
he continued to realize the true idea of his being, and
proved himself to be the living image of his Maker; not
otherwise. But that the spiritual features we have ex-
hibited as the essential characteristics of this image are
those also which Scripture acknowledges to be such,
appears from this, that they are precisely the things
specified in connection with the restoration to the image
of God, in the case of those who partake in the new crea-
tion through the grace and Gospel of Christ. It is said
of suchl that they are created anew after God, or that
they put on the new man (new as contradistinguished
from the oldness of nature’s corruptions), which is renewed
after the image of Him that created him. And the
1Eph. Iv. 24; Col iii. 10
42 RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. [LECT. II.
renewal is more especially described as consisting in
knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness—knowledge,
the product of the illuminated reason made cognizant of
the truth of God; righteousness, the rectitude of the
mind’s will and purpose in the use of that knowledge;
true holiness, the actual result of knowledge so applied
in the habitual exercise of virtuous affections and just
desires. These attributes, therefore, of moral perfection
must have constituted the main features of the Divine
image in which Adam was created, since they are what
the new creation in Christ purposely aims at restoring.
And in nature as well as in grace, they were of a deriva-
tive character; as component elements in the human con-
stitution they took their being from God, and received
their moral impress from the eternal type and pattern of
all that is right and good in Him. Man himself no more
made and constituted them after his own liking, or can
do so, than he did his capacity of thought or his bodily
organization; and the power of will which it was given him
to exercise in connection with the promptings of his moral
nature, had to do merely with the practical effect of its
decisions, not with the nature of the decisions themselves,
which necessarily drew their character from the conscience
that formed them. If, therefore, this conscience in man,
this governing power in his moral constitution, had in
one respect the rightful place of authority over the other
powers and faculties of his being, in another it stood
itself under authority, and in its clearest utterances con-
cerning right and wrong could only affirm that there was
a Divine must in the matter—the law of its being ren-
dered it impossible for it to think or judge otherwise.
In reasoning thus as to what man originally was, when
coming fresh and pure from the hands of his Creator, we
must, of course, proceed in a great degree on the ground
LECT. II.] RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. 43
of what we still know him to be—sin, while it has sadly
vitiated his moral constitution, not having subverted its
nature or essentially changed its manner of working.
The argument, indeed, is plainly from the less to the
greater: if even in its ruin the actings of our moral
nature thus lead up to God, and compel us to feel our-
selves under a rule or an authority established by Him,
how much more man in the unsullied greatness and beauty
of his creation-state, with everything in his condition
fitted to draw his soul heavenwards, standing as it were
face to face with God! Even now, ‘the felt presence of
a judge within the breast powerfully and immediately
suggests the notion of a supreme judge and sovereign,
who placed it there. The mind does not stop at a mere
abstraction; but, passing at once from the abstract to the
concrete, from the law of the heart it makes the rapid in-
ference of a lawgiver.’l Or, as put more fully by a
German Christian philosopher,2 ‘There is something
above the merely human and creaturely in what man is
sensible of in the operation of conscience, whether he may
himself recognise and acknowledge it as such or not.
The workings of his conscience do not, indeed, give
themselves to be known as properly divine, and in reality
are nothing more than the movements of the human soul;
but they involve something which I, as soon as I reflect
upon it, cannot explain from the nature of spirit, if this
is contemplated merely as the ground in nature of my
individual personal1ife, which after a human manner has
been born in me. I stand before myself as before a riddle,
the key of which can be given, not by human self-con-
sciousness, but by the revelation of God in His word. By
this word we are made acquainted with the origination of
the human soul, as having sprung from God, and by God
1 Chalmers, ‘Nat. Theology,’ B. III. c. 2. 2 Harless, ‘Christ. Ethik.,’ sec. 8.
44 RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. [LECT. II.
settled in its creation-state. This relationship as to origin
is an abiding one, because constituted by God, and, how-
ever much it may be obscured, incapable of being dissolved.
It is one also that precedes the development of men’s
self-consciousness; their soul does not place itself in
relation to God, but God stands in relation to their soul.
It is a bond co-extensive with life and being, by which,
through the fact of the creation of their spirit out of God,
it is for the whole course of its creaturely existence indis-
solubly joined to God; and a bond not destroyed by the
instrumentality of human propagation, but only trans-
mitted onwards. On this account, what is the spirit of
life in man is at the same time called the light (lamp) of
God (Prov. xx. 27).’1
On these grounds, derived partly from the testimony
of Scripture, partly from the reflection on the nature and
constitution of the human soul, we are fully warranted to
conclude, that in man’s creation-state there were implanted
the grounds of moral obligation—the elements of a law
1 In substance, the same representations are given in all our sounder writers
on Christian ethics—for example, Butler, M’Cosh, Mansel. ‘Why (asks the
last named writer) has one part of our constitution, merely as such, an impera-
tive authority over the remainder? What right has one part of the human
consciousness to represent itself as duty, and another merely as inclination?
There is but one answer possible. The moral reason, or will, or conscience of
man can have no authority, save as implanted in him by some higher spiritual
Being, as a Law emanating from a Lawgiver. Man can be a law unto himself,
only on the supposition that he reflects in himself the law of God. If he is
absolutely a law unto himself, his duty and his pleasure are undistinguishable
from each other; for he is subject to no one, and accountable to no one.
Duty in his case becomes only a higher kind of pleasure—a balance between
the present and the future, between the larger and the smaller gratification.
We are thus compelled by the consciousness of moral obligation to assume the
existence of a moral Deity, and to regard the absolute standard of right and
wrong as constituted by the nature of that Deity, (‘Bampton Lecture,’ p. 81,
Fifth Ed.). For some partial errors in respect to conscience in man before the
fall, as, compared with conscience subsequent to the fall, see Delitzsch, ' Bibl.
Psych.,’ iii. sec. 4.
LECT. II.] RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. 45
inwrought into the very framework of his being, which
called him perpetually to aim at conformity to the will
and character of God. For what was the law, when it
came, but the idea of the Divine image set forth after its
different sides, and placed in formal contrast to sin and
opposition to God?1 Strictly speaking, however, man
at first stood in law, rather than under law—being formed
to the spontaneous exercise of that pure and holy love,
which is the expression of the Divine image, and hence also
to the doing of what the law requires. Not uncommonly
his relation to law has had a more objective representation
given to it, as if the law itself in some sort of categorical
form had been directly communicated to our first parents.
Thus Tertullian, reasoning against the Jews, who sought
to magnify their nation, by claiming as their exclusive
property the revelation of law, says,2 that ‘at the begin-
ning of the world God gave a law to Adam and Eve’—
he refers specifically to the command not to eat of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil; but he thus
expounds concerning it, ‘In this law given to Adam we
recognise all the precepts as already established which
afterwards budded forth as given by Moses. . . . . . For
the primordial law was given to Adam and Eve in para-
dise as the kind of prolific source (quasi matrix) of all
the precepts of God.’ In common with him Augustine
often identifies the unwritten or natural law given
originally to man, and in a measure retained generally,
though imperfectly, in men’s hearts, with the law after-
wards introduced by Moses and written on the tables of
stone (On Ps. cxviii., Sermo 25, § 4, 5; Liber de Spiritu
et Lit., § 29, 30 ; Opus Imp., Lib. vi. §15). In later times,
among the Protestant theologians, from the Loci Theol.
of Melancthon downwards, the moral law was generally
1 See Sartorius, ‘Heilige Liebe,’ p. 168. 2 Adv. Judæos, c. 2.
46 RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. [LECT. II.
regarded as in substance one with the Decalogue, or the
two great precepts of love to God and love to man, and
this again identified with the law of nature, which was in
its fulness and perfection impressed upon the hearts of
our first parents, and still has a certain place in the hearts
of their posterity; hence such statements as these: ‘The
moral law was written in Adam’s heart,’ ‘The law was
Adam’s lease when God made him tenant of Eden’ (Light-
foot, Works, iv. 7, viii. 379); ‘The law of the ten com-
mandments, being the natural law, was written on Adam's
heart on his creation’ (Boston, ‘Notes to the Marrow,’
Introd.); or, as in the Westminster Confession, ‘God gave
to Adam a law, as a covenant of works, by which He bound
him to personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience;’
which law, after the fall, ‘continued to be a perfect ru1e
of righteousness, and, as such, was delivered by God upon
Mount Sinai in ten commandments, and written in two
tables’ (ch. xix.). We should, however, mistake such
language did we suppose it to mean, that there was either
any formal promulgation of a moral law to Adam, or that
the Decalogue, as embodying this law, was in precise
form internally communicated by some special revelation
to him. It was a brief and popular style of speech, inti-
mating that by the constitution of his spiritual nature,
taken in connection with the circumstances in which he
was placed, he was bound, and knew that he was bound,
to act according to the spirit and tenor of what was after-
wards formally set forth in the ten commands. And so
Lightfoot, for example, who is one of the most explicit
in this mode of representation, brings out his meaning,
‘The law writ in Adam’s heart was not particularly
every command of the two tables, written as they were
in two tables, line by line; but this law in general,
of piety and love towards God, and of justice and love
LECT. II.] RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. 47
toward our neighbour. And in these lay couched a
law to all particulars that concerned either—to branch
forth as occasion for the practice of them should arise: as
in our natural corruption, brought in by sin, there is
couched every sin whatsoever too ready to bud forth,
when occasion is offered.’l In like manner, Delitzsch,
who among Continental writers adheres to the same
mode of expression, speaks of the conscience in man, pre-
eminently of course in unfallen man, by what it indi-
cates of moral duty, as ‘the knowing about a Divine law,
which every man carries in his heart,’ or ‘an actual con-
sciousness of a Divine law engraven in the heart;’ but
explains himself by saying, that ‘the powers of the
spirit and of the soul themselves are as the decalogue of
the Thora (Law) that was in creation imprinted upon us;’2
that is to say, those powers, when in their proper state,
work under a sense of subjection to the will of God, and
in conformity with the great lines of truth and duty un-
folded in the Decalogue.3
Understood after this manner, the language in question
1 Sermon on Exodus xx. 11, Works, IV. 379.
2 ‘Biblische Psychologie,’ pp. 138, 140.
3 Were it necessary, other explanations of a like kind might be given, espe-
cially from our older writers. Thus, in the ‘Marrow of Modern Divinity,’
where the language is frequently used of the law of the two tables being
written on man’s heart, and forming the matter of the covenant of works,* this
is again explained by the fact of man having been made in God’s image or
likeness, and more fully thus, ‘God had furnished his soul with an understand-
ing mind, whereby he might discern good from evil and right from wrong;
and not only so, but also in his will was most perfect uprightness (Eccl. vii.
29), and his instrumental parts (i.e., his executive faculties and powers) were in
an orderly way framed to obedience.’ Much to the same effect Turretine,
‘Inst. Loc. Undecimus, Quæst. II.,’ who represents the moral law as the same
with that which in nature was impressed upon the heart, as to its substance,
though not formally and expressly given as in the Decalogue, sec. III. 2. xvii.;
also Colquhoun, ‘Treatise on the Law and the Gospel,’ p. 7.
* P. I. c. 1.
48 RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. [LECT. II.
is quite intelligible and proper, though certainly capable
of being misapplied (if too literally taken), and in form
slightly differing from the Scriptural representation;1 for
in the passage which most nearly resembles it, and on which
it evidently leans, the apostle does not say that the law
itself, but that the work of the law, was written on men’s
hearts, in so far as they shewed a practical acquaintance
with the things enjoined in it, and a disposition to do
them. Such in the completest sense was Adam, as made
in the Divine image, and replenished with light and
power from on high. It was his very nature to think
and act in accordance with the principles of the Divine
character and government, but, at the same time also, his
imperative obligation; for to know the good, and not to
choose and perform it, could not appear otherwise than
sin. Higher, therefore, than if surrounded on every side
by the objective demands of law, which as yet were not
needed—would, indeed, have been out of place—Adam
had the spirit of the law impregnating his moral being;
he had the mind of the Lawgiver Himself given to bear
rule within—hence, not so properly a revelation of law, in
the ordinary sense of the term, as an inspiration from the
Almighty, giving him understanding in regard to what,
as an intelligent and responsible being, it became him to
purpose and do in life. But this, however good as an
internal constitution—chief, doubtless, among the things
pronounced at first very good by the Creator—required,
both for its development and its probation, certain ordi-
nances of an outward kind, specific lines of action and
observance marked out for it by the hand of God, for the
purpose of providing a proper stimulus to the sense
right and wrong in the bosom, and bringing its relative
strength or weakness into the light of day. And we now
1 Rom. ii. 14, 15.
LECT II.] RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. 49
therefore turn, with the knowledge we have gained of
the fundamental elements of man’s moral condition, to
the formal calling and arrangements amid which he was
placed, to note their fitness for evolving the powers of his
moral nature and testing their character.
II. The first in order, and in its nature the most
general, was the original charge, the word of direction
and blessing, under which mankind, in the persons of the
newly-created pair, were sent on their course of develop-
ment—that, namely, which bade them be fruitful, mul-
tiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have
dominion over its living creatures and its powers of pro-
duction. This word was afterwards brought into closer
adaptation to the circumstances of our first parents, in
the appointment given them to dress and keep the
blessed region, which was assigned them as their more
immediate charge and proper domain. Taken by itself,
it was a call to merely bodily exercise and industrious
employment. But considered as the expression of the
mind of God to those who were made in the Divine
image, and had received their place of dignity and lord-
ship upon earth, for the purpose of carrying out the
Divine plan, everything assumes a higher character; the
natural becomes inseparably linked to the moral. Realiz-
ing his proper calling and destiny, man could not look
upon the world and the interests belonging to it, as if he
occupied an independent position; he must bear himself
as the representative and steward of God, to mark the
operations of His hand, and fulfil His benevolent design.
In such a case how could he fail to see in the ordin-
ances of nature, God’s appointments? and in the laws of
life and production, God’s methods of working? Or if so
regarding them, how could he do otherwise than place him-
50 RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. [LECT. II.
self in loving accord with them, and pliant ministration?
Not, therefore, presuming to deem aught evil which bore
on it the Divine impress of good; but, as a veritable
child of nature, content to watch and observe that he
might learn, to obey that he might govern; and thus,
with ever growing insight into nature’s capacities and
command over her resources, striving to multiply around
him the materials of well-being and enjoyment, and
render the world a continually expanding and brightening
mirror, in which to see reflected the manifold fulness and
glorious perfections of God.
Such, according to this primary charge, was to be
man’s function in the world of nature—his function as
made in God’s image—and as so made capable of under-
standing, of appropriating to himself, and acting out the
ideas which were embodied in the visible frame and order
of things. He was to trace, in the operations proceeding
around him, the workings of the Divine mind, and then
make them bear the impress of his own. Here, there-
fore, stands rebuked for all time the essential ungoli-
ness of an indolent and selfish repose, since only to man’s
habitual oversight and wakeful industry was the earth
to become what its Maker designed it, and paradise itself
to yield to him the attractive beauty and plenteousness
of a proper home. Here, too, stands yet more palpably
rebuked the monkish isolation and asceticism, which
would treat the common gifts of nature with disdain, and
turn with aversion from the ordinary employments and
relations of life: as if the plan of the Divine Architect
had in these missed the proper good for man, and a nobler
ideal were required to correct its faultiness, or supple-
ment its deficiencies! Here yet again was authority
given, the commission, we may say, issued, not merely for
the labour of the hand to help forward the processes of
LECT. II.] RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. 51
nature, and render them productive of ever varying and
beneficent results, but for the labour also of the intellect
to explore the hidden springs and, principles of things, to
bring the scattered materials which the experience of
every day was presenting to his eye and placing at his
disposal under the dominion of order, that they might be
made duly subservient to the interests of intellectual life
and social progress; for in proportion as such results might
be won was man’s destined ascendency over the world
secured, and the mutual, far-reaching interconnections
between the several provinces of nature brought to light,
which so marvellously display the creative foresight and
infinite goodness of God.
We may even carry the matter a step farther. For, con-
stituted as man was, the intelligent head and responsible
possessor of the earth’s fulness, the calling also was his
to develop the powers and capacities belonging to it for
ornament and beauty, as well as for usefulness. With
elements of this description the Creator has richly im-
pregnated the works of His hand, there being not an
object in nature that is incapable of conveying ideas of
beauty;1 and this beyond doubt that each after its kind
might by man be appreciated, refined, and elevated.
‘Man possessed,’ so we may justly say with a recent
writer,2 ‘a sense of beauty as an essential ground of his
intelligence and fellowship with Heaven. He was there-
fore to cultivate the feeling of the beautiful by cultivating
the appropriate beauty inherent in everything that lives.
Nature ever holds out to the hand of man means by
which his reason, when rightly employed, may be enriched
with true gold from Heaven’s treasury. And eve.n now,
in proportion to the restoration to heavenly enlighten-
1 Ruskin’s ‘Modern Painters,’ Vol. II. p. 27.
2 Moore’s ‘First Man and his Place in Creation,’ p. 299.
52 RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. [LECT. II.
ment, we perceive that every kind of beauty and power
is but an embodiment of truth, a form of love, revealing
the relation of the Divine creative mind to loveliness,
symmetry, and justness, as well as expressing tender
thought towards the susceptibilities of all His sentient
creatures, but especially for the instruction and happy
occupation of man himse1f.’ This too, then, is to be
reckoned among the things included in man’s destination
to intelligent and fruitful labour—an end to be prosecuted
in a measure for its own sake, though in great part realiz-
ing itself as the incidental result of what was otherwise
required at his hand.
But labour demands, as its proper complement, rest:
rest in God alternating with labour for God. And here
we come upon another part of man’s original calling;
since in this respect also it became him, as made in God’s
image, to fall in with the Divine order and make it his
own. ‘God rested,’l we are told, after having prosecuted,
through six successive days of work, the preparation of the
world for a fit habitation and field of employment for man.
‘He rested on the seventh day from all His work which
He had made; and He blessed the seventh day and
sanctified it, because that in it He had rested from all
His work which he created and made’—a procedure in
God that would have been inexplicable except as furnish-
ing the ground for a like procedure on the part of man,
as, in that case, the hallowing and benediction spoken of
must have wanted both a proper subject and a definite aim.
True, indeed, as we are often told, there was no formal
enactment binding the observance of the day on man;
there is merely an announcement of what God did, not a
setting forth to man of what man should do; it is not said,
that the Sabbath was expressly enjoined upon man. And
1Gen. ii. 2, 3.
LECT. II.] RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. 53
neither, we reply, should it have been; for, since man was
made in the image of God, it was only, so long as this
image remained pure, the general landmarks of moral and
religious duty, which were required for his guidance, not
specific and stringent regulations: he had the light of
Heaven within him, and of his own accord should have
taken the course, which his own circumstances, viewed in
connection with the Divine procedure, indicated as dutiful
and becoming. The real question is, did not the things
recorded contain the elements of law? Was there not in
them such a revelation of the mind of God, as bespoke
an obligation to observe the day of weekly rest, for those
whose calling was to embrace the order and do the works
of God? Undoubtedly there was—if in the sacred record
we have, what it purports to give, a plain historical
narrative of things which actually occurred. In that case
—the only supposition we are warranted to make—the
primeval consecration of the seventh day has a moral, as
well as religious significance. It set up, at the threshold
of the world’s history, a memorial and a witness, that as
the Creator, when putting forth His active energies on
the visible theatre of the universe, did not allow Himself
to become absorbed in it, but withdrew again to the
enjoyment of His own infinite fulness and sufficiency; so
it behoved His rational creature man to take heed, lest,
when doing the work of God, he should lose himself amid
outward objects, and fail to carry out the higher ends
and purposes of his being with reference to God and
eternity. Is it I alone who say this? Hear a very able
and acute German moralist: ‘It is, indeed, a high
thought (says Wuttke1) that in Sacred Scripture this
creation-rest of God is taken as the original type and
ground of the Sabbath solemnity. It is thereby indi-
1 ‘Handbuch der Christlichen Sittenlehre,’ I. p. 469
54 RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. [LECT. II.
cated, that precisely the innermost part of what constitutes
the likeness of God is that which demands this solemnity
—the truly reasonable religious-moral nature of man, and
not the natural necessity of test and enjoyment. What
with God are but two sides of the eternal life itself, no
temporal falling asunder into active working, and then re-
treating into one’s self, that with respect to the finite spirit
falls partially, at least, into separate portions—namely, into
work and Sabbath-rest. God blessed the seventh day:
—there rests upon the sacred observance of this day a
special and a higher blessing, an imparting of eternal,
heavenly benefits, as the blessing associated with work is
primarily but the imparting of temporal benefits. The
Sabbath has not a merely negative significance; it is not
a simple cessation from work; it has a most weighty, real
import, being the free action of the reasonable God-like
spirit rising above the merely individual and finite, the
reaching forth of the soul, which through work has been
drawn down to the transitory, toward the unchangeable
and Divine.’ Hence (as the same writer also remarks),
the ordinance of the Sabbath belongs to the moral sphere
considered by itself, not merely to the state of redemp-
tion struggling to escape from sin—though such a state
obviously furnishes fresh reasons for the line of duty con-
templated in the ordinance. But at no period could it
be meant to stand altogether alone. Neither before the
fall nor after it, could such calm elevation of the soul to
God and spiritual rest in Him be shut up to the day
specially devoted to it; each day, if rightly spent, must
also have its intervals of spiritual repose and blessing.
So far, then, all was good and blessed. Man, as thus
constituted, thus called to work and rest in harmony and
fellowship with God, was in a state of relative perfection
—of perfection after its kind, though not such as pertains
LECT. II.] RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. 55
to the regeneration in Christ. Scripture itself marks the
difference, when it speaks of the natural or psychical
(yuxiko<n) coming first, then that which is spiritual (pneu-
matiko<n, 1 Cor. xv. 46). The first man was of the earth,
earthy—in the frame and mould of his being simply a part
of this mundane existence, though incomparably its noblest
part, and allied, through his spirit, with the Divine; but
the second man was the Lord from heaven. The creation
of the one was welcomed by the silent homage and regard
of the living creaturehood on earth; the advent of the
other was celebrated by angelic hosts in anthems of joy
from the heavenly places. In Adam there was an intelli-
gence that could discriminate wisely between irrational
natures and his own, as also between one kind of inferior
natures and another; in Christ there was a spirit that
knew what was in man himself, capable of penetrating
into his inmost secrets, yea, even of most perfectly know-
ing an revealing the Father. Finally, high as man’s
original calling was to preside over and subdue the earth,
to improve and multiply its resources, to render it in all
respects subservient to the ends for which it was made;
how mightily was this calling surpassed by the mission of
Him, who came to grapple with the great controversy
between sin and righteousness, to restore the fallen, to
sanctify the unclean, and bring in a world of incorruptible
glory and blessed life, with which God should be most
intimately associated, and over which He should per-
petually rejoice!
The superiority, however, of the things pertaining to
the person and the work of Christ does not prevent those
relating to man’s original state from being fitly viewed as
relatively perfect. But then there was no absolute guar-
antee for this being continued; there was a possibility of
all being lost, since it hung on the steadfastness of a
56 RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. [LECT. II.
merely created head; and hence, as regarded man himself,
there was a need for something of a more special and
definite kind to test his adherence to the perfect order and
rectitude incumbent on him. There might, we can readily
conceive, have been defections from the right and good in
respect to his general calling and destination—failures
distinct enough, perhaps, in themselves, but perceptible
only to the eye of Him who can look on the desires and
intents of the heart. Here, however, it was indispensable
that the materials for judgment should be patent to all.
For, in Adam humanity itself was on its trial—the whole
race having been potentially created in him, and destined
to stand or fall, to be blessed or cursed, with him. The
question, therefore, as to its properly decisive issue, must
be made to turn on conformity to an ordinance, at once
reasonable in its nature and specific in its requirements—
an ordinance which the simplest could understand, and
respecting which no uncertainty could exist, whether it
had been kept or not. Such in the highest degree was
the appointment respecting the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil, forbidding it to be eaten on the pain of
death—an appointment positive in its character, in a
certain sense arbitrary, yet, withal, perfectly natural, as
relating to a particular tree singled out for the purpose
from many others around it, imposing no vexatious
burden, requiring only the exercise of a measure of
personal restraint in deference to the authority, and
acknowledgment of the supreme right, of Him of whom
all was held—in short, one of the easiest, most natural,
most unexceptionable of probationary enactments. It was
not exactly, as put by Tertullian, as if this command re-
specting the tree of knowledge formed the kind of quint-
essence or prolific source of all other moral commands;
for in itself, and apart from the Divine authority imposing
LECT. II.] RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. 57
it, there was nothing about it strictly moral: not on this
account therefore was it given, but as serving to erect a
standard, every way proper and becoming, around which,
the elements of good and evil might meet, and the
ascendency of the one or the other be made manifest.1
And so the Sovereign Disposer of events by the very
appointment undertook to order it. If the Divine image
should anyhow begin to lose the perfection of its parts,
if a spirit of disaffection should enter the bosoms of our
first parents, it could not be left to their own choice or to
merely adventitious circumstances, in what form or direc-
tion this should appear. It must assume an attitude of
contrariety to this Divine ordinance, and discover itself in
a disposition to eat of that tree of which God had said,
They should not eat of it, lest they died. There, pre-
cisely, and not elsewhere—thus and not otherwise was
it to be seen, if they could maintain their part in this
covenant of life; or, if not, then the obvious mastery of
the evil over the good in their natures.
III. We are not called here to enter into any formal
discussion of the temptation and the fall. Profound
mysteries hang around the subject; but the general
result, and the overt steps that led to it, are known to
all. Hearkening to the voice of the tempter, that they
should be as God, knowing good and evil, our first parents
did eat of the interdicted tree; and, in doing so, broke
through the law of their being, which bound them ever
1 So, indeed, Tertullian, when he explains himself, virtually regarded it:
‘Denique si dominum deum suum dilexissent’ (viz. Adam and Eve). ‘contra
præceptum ejus non fecissent; si proximum diligerent, id est semetipsos, per-
suasioni serpentis non credidissent,’ etc. And the general conclusion he draws
is, 'Denique, ante legem Moysi scriptam in tabulis lapideis, legem fuisse con-
tendo non scriptam, quæ naturaliter intelligebatur et a patribus custodiebatur.’
(Adv. Judæos, sec. 2).
58 RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. [LECT. II.
to live and act in loving allegiance to the God who made
them, and of whom they held whatever they possessed.
Self now took the place of God; they would be their own
rule and their own end, and thereby gave way to the
spirit of apostacy; first entertaining doubts of God’s
goodness, as if the prohibition under which they had been
placed laid an undue restraint on their freedom, limited
too much their range of action and enjoyment; then
disbelieving God’s testimony as to the inevitable result
of disobedience; finally, making the gratification of their
own self-will and fleshly desire the paramount considera-
tion which was to determine their course. At every step
a violation of the principle of love—of love in both its
departments; first, indeed, and most conspicuously, in
reference to God, who was suspected, slighted, disobeyed;
but also in reference to one another, and their prospective
offspring, whose interests were sacrificed at the shrine of
selfishness. The high probation, therefore, issued in a
mournful failure; humanity, in its most favoured condi-
tions, proved unequal to the task of itself holding the
place and using the talents committed to it, in loving
subjection to the will of Heaven; and the penalty of sin,
not the guerdon of righteousness, became its deserved
portion. Shall not the penalty take effect? Can the
Righteous One do otherwise than shew Himself the enemy
and avenger of sin, by resigning to corruption and death
the nature which had allied itself to the evil? Where,
if He did, would have been the glory of His name?
Where the sanction and authority of His righteous
government? It was for the purpose, above all, of insti-
tuting such a government in the world, and unfolding by
means of it the essential attributes of His character, that
man had been brought on the stage of being as the proper
climax of creation; and if, for this end, it was necessary
LECT. II.] RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW 59
that righteousness should be rewarded, was it not equally
necessary that sin should be punished? So, death
entered, where life only should have reigned; it entered
as the stern yet sublime proof, that in the Divine govern-
ment of the world the moral must carry it over the
natural; that conformity to the principles of righteous-
ness is the indispensable condition of blessing; and that
even if grace should interpose to rectify the evil that had
emerged, and place the hopes of mankind on a better
footing than that of nature, this grace must reign
through righteousness, and overcome death by overcom-
ing the sin which caused it.
To have these great principles written so indelibly and
palpably on the foundations of the world’s history was of
incalculable moment for its future instruction and well-
being; for the solemn lessons and affecting memories of
the fall entered as essential elements of men’s view of
God, and formed the basis of all true religion for a sinful
world. They do so still. And, certainly, if it could be
proved by the cultivators of natural science, that man,
simply as such—man by the very constitution of his
being—is mortal, it would strike at the root of our reli-
gious beliefs; for it would imply, that death did not come
as a judgement from God, and was the result of physical
organization or inherent defectibility, not the wages of
sin. This, however, is a point that lies beyond the range
of natural science. It may be able to shew, that death
is not only now, but ever has been, the law of merely
sentient existence, and that individual forms of sentient
life, having no proper personality—if perpetuated at all,
must be perpetuated in the species. But man is on one
side only, and that the lower side, related to sentient
forms of being. In what constitute the more essential
characteristics of his nature—intelligence, reason, will,
60 RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. [LECT. II.
conscience—he stands in close affinity to God; he is
God’s image and representative, and not a liability to
death, but the possession of endless life, must be regarded
as his normal state of being. And to secure this for the
animal part of his frame, so long as spiritually he lived to
God, was, at least, one part of the design of the tree of
life (whatever higher purposes it might also have been
intended to serve as the pledge or symbol of life to his
soul): it was the specific antidote of death. A most in-
adequate provision, it may perhaps be alleged, for such
a purpose, suited only for a single pair, or for a compara-
tive handful of people, but by no means for a numerous
race. Let it be so: He who made the provision knew
well for how many, or how long, it might be required;
and, in point of fact, from no misarrangement or defect
in this respect, the evil it was ordained to guard against
found an entrance into the world. By man’s dis-
obedience, by that alone, came sin, and death by sin—
such is the teaching of Scripture alike in its earlier and
later revelations; and the theology which would elimi-
nate this doctrine from its fundamental beliefs must be
built on another foundation than the word of the living
God.
LECT. III.] THE REVELATION OF LAW. 61
LECTURE III.
THE REVELATION OF LAW, STRICTLY SO CALLED, VIEWED IN RE-
SPECT TO THE TIME AND OCCASION OF ITS PROMULGATION.
A PRINCIPLE of progression pervades the Divine
plan as unfolded in Scripture, which must be borne
in mind by those who would arrive at a correct under-
standing, either of the plan as a whole, or of the charac-
teristic features and specific arrangements which have
distinguished it at one period, as compared with another.
We can scarcely refer in proof of this to the original con-
stitution of things, since it so speedily broke up—though,
there can be no doubt, it also had interwoven with it a
principle of progression. The charge given to man at the
moment of creation, if it had been in any measure exe-
cuted, would necessarily have involved a continuous rise
in the outward theatre of his existence; and it may justly
be inferred, that as this proceeded, his mental and bodily
condition would have partaken of influences fitted in-
definitely to ennoble and bless it. But the fatal blow
given by the fall to that primeval state rendered the real
starting-point of human history an essentially different
one. The progression had now to proceed, not from a
less to a more complete form of excellence, but from
a state of sin and ruin to one of restored peace, life, and
purity, culminating in the possession of all blessing and
glory in the kingdom of the Father. And, in accordance
with this plan of God for the recovery and perfecting of
those who should be heirs of salvation, His revelation
62 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. III.
spiritual and divine things assumes the form of a gradual
development and progressive history—beginning as a
small stream amid the wreck and desolation of the fall
just enough to cheer the heart of the fallen and brace it
for the conflict with evil, but receiving additions from
age to age, as the necessities of men and the purpose of
God required, until, in the incarnation and work of Christ
for the salvation of the world, it reached that fulness of
light and hope, which prompted an apostle to say, ‘The
darkness is past, and the true light now shineth.’
It may seem strange to our view—there is undoubtedly
in it something of the dark and mysterious—that the
plan of God for the enlightenment and regeneration of
the world should have been formed on such a principle
of progression, and that, in consequence, so many ages
should have elapsed before the realities on which light
and blessing mainly depended were brought distinctly
into view. Standing, as we ourselves do, on a point of
time, and even still knowing but in part the things of
God’s kingdom, we must be content, for the present, to
remain ignorant of the higher reasons which led to the
adoption of this principle as a pervading characteristic of
the Divine administration. But where we can do little
to explain, we are able to exemplify; for the ordinary
scheme of providence presents us here with a far-reaching
and varied analogy. On the same principle of progres-
sion is the life-plan of each individual constructed; so
that, on an average, a half, and in the case of multitudes
greatly more than a half, of their earthly life is spent
before the capacity for its proper employments has been
attained. In the history, also, of nations and com-
munities, of arts and sciences, we see the principle in
constant operation, and have no difficulty in connecting
with it much of the activity, enjoyment, and well-being
LECT. III.] TIMES OF PREPARATION. 63
of mankind. It is this very principle of progression
which is the mainspring of life’s buoyancy and hopeful-
ness, and which links together, with a profound and
varied interest, one stage of life with another. Reasons
equally valid would doubtless be found in the higher line
of things which relates to the dispensations of God
toward men, could we search the depths of the Divine
counsels, and see the whole as it presents itself to the
eye of Him who perceives the end from the beginning.
It is the fact itself, however, which we here think it
of importance to note; for, assuming the principle in
question to have had a directive sway in the Divine
dispensations, it warrants us to expect measures of light
at one stage, and modes of administration, which shall
bear the marks of relative imperfection as compared with
others. This holds good of the revelation of law, which
we now approach, when placed beside the manifestation of
God in the Gospel; and even in regard to the law itself
the principle of progression was allowed to work; for it
might as well be said, that the law formed the proper
complement and issue of what preceded it, as that it
became the goundwork of future and grander revelations.
To this, as a matter of some importance, our attention
must first be given.
Considering the length of the period that elapsed from
the fall of man to the giving of the law, the little that
remains in the Divine records of explicit revelation as to
moral and religious duty, appears striking, and cannot be
regarded as free from difficulty when contemplated from
a modern point of view. It may be so, however, chiefly
from the scantiness of our materials, and our consequent
inability to realize the circumstances of the time, or to
take in all the elements of directive knowledge which
were actually at work in society. This deficiency is
64 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. III.
certainly not to be supplied, after the fashion of Blunt,
by combining together the scattered notices in the early
history of the Bible, and looking upon them as so many
hints or fragmentary indications of a regularly constituted
patriarchal church, with its well furnished rubric as to
functions, places, times, and forms of worship.1 These are
not the points on which the comparatively isolated and
artless families of those early times might be expected to
have received special and unrecorded communications
from Heaven. It had been as much out of place for them
as for the early Christian communities, while worshipping
in upper chambers, hired school-rooms, and sequestered
retreats, to have had furnished to their hand a ritual of
service fit only for spacious cathedrals and a fully deve-
loped hierarchy. We are rather to assume, that brief as
the outline which Scripture gives of the transactions of
the period, it is still one that contains whatever is to be
deemed essential to the matter as a history of Divine
revelation; and that only by making proper account of
the things which are recorded, not by imagining such as
are not, can we frame to ourselves an adequate or well-
grounded idea of the state of those earlier generations of
mankind, as to the means of knowledge they possessed,
or the claims of service that lay upon them, in respect
to moral and religious duty. Let us endeavour to indi-
1 Some of these, as might be expected, are obtained in a very arbitrary
manner, and look almost like a caricature of the text of Scripture:–as when in
Esau’s ‘goodly raiment,’ furtively used by Jacob, is found the sacerdotal robes
of the first-born,* and something similar also in Joseph’s coat of many colours—
as if this mere boy were already invested with priestly attire, and not only so,
but in that attire went about the country, since he certainly wore it when he
visited his brethren at Dothan. Can any parallel to this be found even in the
complicated legislation of the Mosaic ritual? The priests who were ministering
at the tabernacle or temple had to wear robes of office, but not when engaged
in ordinary employments.
* ‘Scripture Coincidences,’ p. 12.
LECT. III.] TIMES OF PREPARATION. 65
cate some of the leading points suggested by Scripture on
the subject, without, however, dwelling upon them, and
for the purpose more especially of apprehending the rela-
tion in which they stood to the coming legislation of Sinai.
1. At the foundation of all we must place the fact of
man’s knowledge of God—of a living, personal, righteous
God—as the, Creator of all things, and of man himself as
His intelligent, responsible creature, made after His image,
and subject to His authority. Whatever effect the fall
might ultimately have on this knowledge, and on the
conscious relationship of man to his maker, his moral
and religious history started with it—a knowledge still
fresh and vivid when he was expelled from Eden, in
some aspects of it even widened and enlarged by the
circumstances that led to that expulsion. ‘Heaven lies
about us in our infancy:’—it did so pre-eminently, and
in another sense than now, when the infancy was that of
the human race itself; and not as by ‘trailing clouds of
glory’ merely, but by the deep instincts of their moral
being, and the facts of an experience not soon to be for-
gotten, its original heads knew that they came from
God as their home.’ Here, in a moral respect, lay their
special vantage-ground for the future; for not the authority
of conscience merely, but the relation of this to the higher
authority of God, must have been among their clearest
and most assured convictions. They knew that it had its
eternal source and prototype in the Divine nature, and
that in all its actings it stood under law to God. Good-
ness after the pattern of His goodness must have been
what they felt called by this internal monitor to aim at;
and in so far as they might fall beneath it, or deviate
from it, they knew—they could not but know—that it
was the voice of God they were virtually disobeying.
2. Then, as regards the manner in which this call
E
66 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. III.
to imitate God’s goodness and be conformed to His will
was to be carried out, it would of course be understood
that, whatever was fairly involved in the original destina-
tion of man to replenish and cultivate the earth, so as to
make it productive of the good of which it was capable,
and subservient to the ends of a wise and paternal
government, this remained as much as ever his calling
and duty. Man’s proper vocation, as the rational head of
this lower world, was not abolished by the fall; it had
still to be wrought out, only under altered circumstances,
and amid discouragements which had been unknown, if
sin had not been allowed to enter into his condition. And
with this destination to work and rule for God on earth,
the correlative appointment embodied in God’s procedure
at creation, to be ever and anon entering into His rest,
must also be understood to have remained in force. As
the catastrophe of the fall had both enlarged the sphere
and aggravated the toil of work, so the calm return of
the soul to God, and the gathering up of its desires and
affections into the fulness of His life and blessing, especially
on the day peculiarly consecrated for the purpose, could
not but increasingly appear to the thoughtful mind an
act of homage to the Divine will, and an exercise of pious
feeling eminently proper and reasonable.
3. Turning now, thirdly, to the sphere of family and
domestic life, the foundation laid at the first, in the for-
mation of one man, and out of this man one woman to be
his bosom companion and wife, this also stood as before-
and carried the same deep import. The lesson originally
drawn from the creative act, whether immediately drawn
by Adam himself or not—‘therefore shall a man leave his
father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and
they shall be one flesh’1—was a lesson for all time. Our
1 Gen. ii. 24.
LECT. III.] TIMES OF PREPARATION. 67
Lord (who as the creative Word was the immediate agent
in the matter) when on earth set to His seal, at once to
the historical fact, and to the important practical deduction
flowing from it; and He added, for the purpose of still
further exhibiting its moral bearing, ‘So then they are
no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath
joined together, let not man put asunder.’1 Thus was im-
pressed on the very beginnings of human history the
stamp of God’s appointed order for families—the close
and endearing nature of the marriage-tie—the life-union
it was intended to form—the mutual sympathy and affec-
tion by which it should be sustained—and the common
interest it created, as well as the loving regard it naturally
tended to evoke, in behalf of the offspring that might
issue from it. All this, though not formally imposed by
definite rules and prescriptions, was yet by the moral
significance of that primeval fact laid upon the consciences
of men, and indicated the place which the family constitu-
tion and its relative duties were to hold in the organization
and progress of socIety.2
1 Mark x. 8, 9.
2 The objections that have been made to the sacred narrative respecting
the fact of Eve’s formation out of a rib of Adam, as that it was unworthy of God;
that his posterity are not deficient in that part of their bodily organization,
which they would have been if Adam had been actually deprived of a rib;
that we have therefore in the story not a fact but a myth, teaching the com-
panionship of the woman to man—are entitled to no serious consideration. It
is the very foundations of things we have here to do with, in a social and moral
respect, and for this, not shadowy myths (the inventions, always, of a cornpara-
tively late age) but great outstanding facts were necessary to furnish the requisite
instruction. Since important moral ends were in view for all coming time, why
could not God have taken a portion of Adam’s frame for the formation of his
partner in life, and afterwards repaired the loss? or, if the defect continued
in him as an individual, prevented its transmission to posterity? Somehow,
the formation of the first woman, as well as the first man, had to be brought
about by a direct operation of Deity; and why not thus rather than otherwise,
if thus only it could be made the symbol of a great truth, the embodiment of
an imperishable moral lesson? No reason can be shewn to the contrary.
68 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. III.
4. Of devotion as consisting in specific acts of religious
worship, the record of man’s creation, it must be admitted,
is altogether silent, nor does anything appear in the form
of a command for ages to come. This cannot, however,
be fairly regarded as a proof, either that nothing in the
matter of worship was involved in the fundamental
grounds of moral obligation, or that the sense of duty in
that respect did not from the first find some fitting ex-
pression. The hallowing of a particular day of the week,
and connecting with its observance a peculiar blessing,
evidently implied the recognition of the religious senti-
ment in man’s bosom, and formed an ever-recurring call
to exercises of devotion. For what is devotion in its
proper nature, and stript of its mere accessories? It is
just the Sabbath idea realized, or, in the simple but
expressive language of Bishop Butler,l ‘Devotion is retire-
ment from the world God has made, to Him alone: it is
to withdraw from the avocations of sense, to employ our
attention wholly upon Him as upon an object actually
present, to yield ourselves up to the influence of the Divine
presence, and to give full scope to the affections of gratitude,
love, reverence, trust, and dependence, of which infinite
power, wisdom, and goodness is the natural and only
adequate object.’ The constitution of man’s nature, and
the circumstances in which he was originally placed, could
not but lead him to cherish and exercise the feelings of
such a spirit of devotion—though with what accompani-
ments of outward form we have no indication, nor is it
of any practical moment, since they can only be under-
stood to have been the natural and appropriate manifesta-
tions of what was felt within. With the fall, however,
matters in this respect underwent a material change; for
the worship which became a sinner could not be the same
1 Sermons, Ser. XIV.
LECT. III.] TIMES OF PREPARATION. 69
with that which flowed spontaneously from the heart of
one who was conscious only of good, nor could it be left
entirely to men’s own unaided conceptions; for if so left,
how could they be assured that it was accepted of their
Maker? how know it to be such as He would bless?
Somehow, therefore—apparently, indeed, in connection
with the clothing of the shame of our first parents by
means of the skins of slain victims—they were guided to
a worship by sacrifice as the one specially adapted to their
state as sinners, and one which probably from the very
first (by means of the supernatural agencies associated
with the entrance to Eden and its tree of life, viz., the
flaming sword and the cherubim), received upon it the
marks of Divine approval. At all events, in the history of
their earliest offspring, worship by the sacrifice of slain
victims becomes manifest as the regular and approved mode
of access to God in its more formal acts of homage. Here
then, again Without any positive command, far less any
formally prescribed ritual, there still were in the Divine
procedure, taken in connection with men’s moral convic-
tions and feelings, the grounds of moral obligation and
specific duty—not law, indeed, in the formal sense of the
term, but the elements of law, or such indications of the
Divine will as were sufficient to guide truly humble and
God-fearing men in the earlier ages of the world to give
expression to their faith and hope in God by a mode of
worship suited to their condition and acceptable to Heaven.
5. Another thing also ought to be borne in mind in
respect to those varied materials of moral and religious
duty, which is this—that while they belonged to the
origination of things on earth, to things of which the first
heads of the human family were either the only witnesses,
or the direct and immediate subjects, they had the advan-
tage of being associated with a living testimony, which
70 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. III.
was capable of preserving it fresh and unimpaired for
many generations. The longevity of the first race of
patriarchs had doubtless many important ends to serve;
but we cannot be wrong in mentioning this among the
chief. He who had received his being direct and pure
from the hand of God, to whom had been revealed the
wonders of God’s work in creation, who had himself
walked with God in paradise, was present with his living
voice to tell of all he had seen and heard, and by his
example (as we can scarcely doubt) to confirm and com-
mend his testimony, down even to the times of Lamech,
the father of Noah. So that, if the materials of knowledge
respecting God’s will to men were comparatively few, and
were in many respects linked to the facts of a primeval past,
this continuous personal testimony served to render that
past a kind of perpetual present, and so to connect, as by
a living bond, the successive generations of men with the
original grounds of faith and hope for the world. There
were, also, as is clear from the case of Enoch and other
incidental notices, closer communings occasionally main-
tained by God with believing men, and for special seasons
more definite communications made of His will. Sparse,
therefore, as the memorials are, in a religious respect,
which belong to this period, as compared with its great
length, God still did not leave Himself without a wit-
ness; and men who were alive to the responsibilities of
their position, and disposed to follow the impulses of
their moral nature, could not complain of being without
any sure direction as to the great landmarks of truth
and duty.
6. Yet, it is impossible to carry the matter further;
and to speak of law in the moral and religious sphere—
law in some definite and imperative form, standing out-
side the conscience, and claiming authority to regulate
LECT. III.] TIMES OF PREPARATION. 71
its decisions, as having a place in the earlier ages of man-
kind, is not warranted by any certain knowledge we
possess of the remoter periods of God’s dispensations.
That ‘all human laws are sustained by one that is
divine’ (a saying ascribed to Heraclitus), seems, as several
others of a like kind that might be quoted, to point to a
traditional belief in some primitive Divine legislation;
and in a well-known noble passage of Cicero, which it is
well to bring into remembrance in discussions of this
nature, there is placed above all merely local and con-
ventional enactments of men, a law essentially Divine, of
eternal existence and permanent universal obligation,1
Est quidem vera lex, etc. ‘There is indeed a true law,
right reason, conformable to nature, diffused among all,
unchanging, eternal, which, by commanding, urges to
duty; by prohibiting, deters from fraud; not in vain com-
manding or prohibiting the good, though by neither
moving the wicked. This law cannot be abrogated, nor
may anything be withdrawn from it; it is in the power
of no senate or people to set us free from it; nor is there
to be sought any extraneous teacher or interpreter of it.
It shall not be one law at Rome, another at Athens; one
now, another at some future time; but one law, alike
eternal and unchangeable, shall bind all nations and
through all time; and one shall be the common teacher,
as it were, and governor of all—God, who is Himself the
Author, the Administrator, and Enactor of this law.’
Elsewhere, he expresses it as the opinion of the wisest
men,2 that ‘this fundamental law and ultimate judgment
was the mind of Deity either ordering or forbidding all
things according to reason; whence that law which the
gods have given to mankind is justly praised. For it
fitly belongs to the reason and judgment of the wise to
1 De Republica, III. 22. 2 De Leg., II. 4.
72 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. III.
enjoin one thing and prohibit another.’ And in thus
having its ground in right reason, which is the property
of man as contradistinguished from beasts, and is the
same in man as in God, he finds the reason of this law
being so unchanging, universal, and perpetually binding.
But the very description implies that no external legisla-
tion was meant coming somewhere into formal existence
among men; it is but another name for the findings of
that intelligent and moral nature, which is implanted in
all men, though in some is more finely balanced and
more faithfully exercised than in others. Under the
designation of the supremacy of conscience, it appears
again in the discourses of Bishop Butler, and is analysed
and described as ‘our natural guide, the guide assigned
us by the Author of our nature,’ that by virtue of which
‘man in his make, constitution, or nature, is, in the
strictest and most proper sense, a law to himself,’ whereby
‘he hath the rule of right within; what is wanting is
only that it be honestly attended to.’ But this has
already been taken into account, and placed at the
head of those moral elements in man’s condition which
belonged to him even as fallen, and which, though pos-
sessing little of the character of objective or formal law,
yet earned with them such directive light and just
authority as should have had the force of law to his
mind, and rendered inexcusable those who turned aside
to transgression.1
7. The result, however, proved that all was insuffi-
cient; a grievous defect lurked somewhere. The means
of knowledge possessed, and the motives to obedience
1 It is only in this sense, and as connected with the means of instruction
provided by the course of God’s providential dealings, that we can speak of the
light possessed by men as sufficient for moral and religious duty. The light of
conscience in fallen man by itself can never reach to the proper knowledge of
the things which concern his relation to God and immortality.
LECT. III.] TIMES OF PREPARATION. 73
with which they were accompanied, utterly failed with
the great majority of men to keep them in the path of
uprightness, or even to restrain the most shameful de-
generacy and corruption. The principle of evil which
wrought so vehemently, and so early reached an over-
mastering height in Cain, grew and spread through a
continually widening circle, till the earth was filled with
violence, and the danger became imminent, unless averted
by some forcible interposition, of all going to perdition.
Where lay the radical defect? It lay, beyond doubt, in
the weakness of the moral nature, or in that fatal rent
which had been made by the entrance of sin into man’s
spiritual being, dividing between his soul and God, divid-
ing even between the higher and the lower propensities
of his soul, so that the lower, instead of being regulated
and controlled by the higher, practically acquired the
ascendency. Conscience, indeed, still had, as by the
constitution of nature it must ever have, the right to
command the other faculties of the soul, and prescribe
the rule to be obeyed; but what was wanting was the
power to enforce this obedience, or, as Butler puts it, to
see that the rule be honestly attended to; and the want
is one which human nature is of itself incompetent to
rectify. For the bent of nature being now on the side of
evil, the will, which is but the expression of the nature,
is ever ready to give effect to those aims and desires
which have for their object some present gratification,
and correspondingly tend to blunt the sensibilities and
overbear the promptings of conscience in respect to things
of higher moment. In the language of the apostle, the
flesh lusts against the spirit, yea, and brings it into bon-
dage to the law of sin and death. And the evil, once
begun, is from its very nature a growing one, alike in the
individual and in the species. For when man, in either
74 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. III.
respect, does violence to the better qualities of his nature,
when he defaces the Divine image in which he was made,
he instinctively turns away from any close examination
of his proper likeness—withdraws himself also more and
more from the thoughts and the companionships which
tend to rebuke his ungodliness, and delights in those
which foster his vanity and corruption. Hence, the
melancholy picture drawn near the commencement of the
epistle to the Romans, as an ever deepening and darken-
ing progression in evil, realizes itself wherever fallen
nature is allowed to operate unchecked. It did so in the
primitive, as well as the subsequent stages of human
history: First, men refused to employ the means of
knowledge they possessed respecting God’s nature and will,
would not glorify Him as God (gno<ntej to>n qeo>n ou]k e]do<casan);
then, having thus separated themselves from the true
light, they fell into the mazes of spiritual error and will-
worship, became frivolous, full of empty conceits, mis-
taking the false for the true, the shadowy for the real;
finally, not thinking it worth while to keep by the right
knowledge of God (ou]k e]doki<masan to>n qeo>n e@xein e]n e]pgnw<sej),
treating it as comparatively a thing of nought, they
were themselves made to appear worthless and vile—
given up by God to a reprobate mind (a]do<kimon nou?n)
whereby they lost sight of their true dignity, and became
the slaves of all manner of impure, hurtful, and pernicious
lusts, which drove them headlong into courses equally
offensive to God, and subversive of their own highest
good.
8. This process of degeneracy, though sure to have
taken place anyhow, had opportunities of development
and license during the earlier periods of the world’s
history, which materially helped to make it more rapid
and general. If there were not then such temptations to
LECT. III.] TIMES OF PREPARATION. 75
flagrant evil as exist in more advanced states of society,
there were also greatly fewer and less powerful restraints.
Each man was to a larger extent than now the master of
his own movements: social and political organizations
were extremely imperfect; the censorship of the press,
the voice of an enlightened public opinion in any syste-
matic form, was wanting, and there was also wanting the
wholesome discipline and good order of regularly con-
stituted churches; so that ample scope was found for
those who were so inclined, to slight the monitions of
their moral sense, and renounce the habits and observ-
ances which are the proper auxiliaries of a weak virtue,
and necessary in the long run to the preservation of a
healthful and robust piety in communities. The fer-
mentation of evil, therefore, wrought on from one stage
to another, till it reached a consummation of appalling
breadth and magnitude. And yet not for many long ages
—not till the centuries of antediluvian times had passed
away, and centuries more after a new state of things
had commenced its course—did God see meet to manifest
Himself to the world in the formal character of Lawgiver,
and confront men’s waywardness and impiety with a code
of objective commands and prohibitions, in the peremptory
tone, Thou shalt do this, and Thou shalt not do that:—
A proof, manifestly, of God’s unwillingness to assume this
more severe aspect in respect to beings He had made in
His own image and press upon them, in the form of
specific enactments, His just claims on their homage and
obedience! He would rather—unspeakably rather—that
they should know Him in the riches of His fatherly good-
ness, and should be moved, not so much by fear, as by
forbearance and tenderness, to act toward Him a faithful
and becoming part! Hence He delayed as long as
possible the stringent and imperative revelation of law,
76 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. III.
which by the time alone of its appearance is virtually
acknowledged to have been a kind of painful necessity,
and in its very form is a ‘reflection upon man’s incon-
stancy of homage and love.’1
God did not, however, during the long periods referred
to, leave Himself without witness, either as to His dis-
pleasure on account of men’s sin, or the holiness in heart
and conduct which He required at their hands. If His
course of administration displayed little of the formal
aspect of law, it still was throughout impregnated with
the principles of law; for it contained manifestations of
the character and purposes of God which were both fitted
and designed to draw the hearts of men toward Him in
confiding love, and inspire them with His own supreme
regard to the interests of righteousness. Of law, strictly
so called, we find nothing applicable to the condition of
mankind generally, from the period of the fall to the
redemption from Egypt, except the law of blood for blood,
introduced immediately after the Deluge, and the ordi-
nance of circumcision, to seal the covenant with Abraham,
and symbolize the moral purity which became those who
entered into it. But even these, though legal in their
form, partook in their import and bearing of the character
of grace; they came in as appendages to the fresh and
fuller revelations which had been given of God’s mercy
and loving-kindness—the one in connection with Noah’s
covenant of blessing, and as a safeguard thrown around
the sacredness of human life; the other in connec-
tion with the still richer and more specific covenant of
blessing established with Abraham. Indeed, during the
whole of what is usually called the patriarchal period,
the most prominent feature in the Divine administration
consisted in the unfoldings of promise, or in the materials
1 ‘Ecce Deus,’ p. 234.
LECT. III.] TIMES OF PREPARATION. 77
it furnished to sinful men for the exercise of faith and
hope. God again condescended to hold familiar inter-
course with them. He gave them, not only His word of
promise, but His oath confirming the word, that He might
win from them a more assured and implicit confidence;
and by very clear and impressive indications of His mind
in providence, He made it to be understood how ready
He was to welcome those who believed, and to enlarge,
as their faith and love increased, their interest in the
heritage of blessing. It is the story of grace in its
earlier movements—grace delighting to pardon, and by
much free and loving fellowship, by kind interpositions of
providence, and encouraging hopes, striving to bring the
subjects of it into proper sympathy and accord with the
purposes of Heaven.
Yet here also grace reigned through righteousness;
and the righteousness at times ripened into judgement.
There was the mighty catastrophe of the Deluge lying in
the background—emphatically God’s judgment on the
world of the ungodly, and the sure presage of what
might still be expected to befall the wicked. At a later
period, and within the region of God’s more peculiar
operations in grace, there was the overthrow of the cities
of the plain, which were made for their crying enor-
mities to suffer ‘the vengeance of eternal fire.’ So still
onwards, and in the circle itself of the chosen seed,
or the races most nearly related to them, there were
ever and anon occurring marks of Divine displeasure,
rebukes in providence, which were designed to temper
the exhibitions of mercy, and keep up salutary impres-
sions of the righteous character of God. And it may
justly be affirmed, that for those who were conversant
with the events which make up the sacred history of
the period, it was not left them to doubt that the face
78 THE REVELATION OF LAW [LECT. III.
of God was towards the righteous, and is set against
them that do wickedly.
9. Such, certainly, should have been the result; such
also it would have been, if they had wisely considered the
matter, and marked the character and tendency of the
Divine dispensations. But this, unfortunately, was too
little done; and so the desired result was most imper-
fectly reached. So much so, indeed, that at the close of
the patriarchal period all seemed verging again to utter
ruin. The heathen world, not excepting those portions
of it which came most in contact with the members of
God’s covenant, had with one consent surrendered them-
selves to the corruptions of idolatry; and the covenant
seed themselves, after all the gracious treatment they
had received, and the special moral training through
which they had passed, were gradually sinking into the
superstitious and degrading manners of Egypt—their
knowledge of Jehovah as the God of their fathers became
little better than a vague tradition, their faith in the
promise of His covenant ready to die, and all ambition
gone, except with the merest remnant, to care for more
than a kind of tolerable existence in the land of Goshen.l
A change, therefore, in the mode of the Divine admini-
stration was inevitable, if living piety and goodness were
really to be preserved among men, and the cause of
righteousness was not wholly to go down. This cause had
come to be quite peculiarly identified with the people of
Israel. God’s covenant of blessing was with them; they
were the custodiers of His word of salvation for the
world; and to fulfil their calling they must be rescued
from degradation, and placed in a position of freedom
and enlargement. But even this was not enough. The
history of the past had made it manifest that other
1 Exodus, ii. 14; v. 21; xvi. 4. Ezekiel, xxiii. 25, 39.
LECT. III.] TIMES OF PREPARATION. 79
securities against defection, more effectual guarantees
for righteousness than had yet been taken, would require
to be introduced. Somehow the bonds of moral obliga-
tion must be wound more closely around them, so as to
awaken and keep alive upon their conscience a more pro
found and steadfast regard to the interests of righteous-
ness. And when, looking forward to what actually took
place, we find the most characteristic feature in the new
era that emerged to be the revelation of law, we are
warranted to infer that such was its primary and leading
object. It could not have been intended—the very time
and occasion of its introduction prove that it could not
have been intended—to occupy an independent place; it
if was of necessity but the sequel or complement of the
covenant of promise, with which were bound up the hopes
of the world’s salvation, to help out in a more regular
and efficient manner the moral aims which were involved
in the covenant itself, and which were directly contem-
plated in the more special acts and dealings of God
toward His people. It formed a fresh stage, indeed, in
the history of the Divine dispensations; but one in which
the same great objects were still aimed at, and both the
ground of a sinner’s confidence towards God, and the
nature of the obligations growing out of it, remained
essentially as they were.
10. This becomes yet more clear and conclusively cer-
tain, when we look from the general connection which
the revelation of law had with preceding manifestations
of God, to the things which formed its more immediate
prelude and preparation. The great starting-point here
was the redemption from Egypt; and the direct object
of this was to establish the covenant which God had
made with the heads of the Israelitish people. Hence,
when appearing for the purpose of charging Moses to
80 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. III.
undertake the work of deliverance, the Lord revealed
Himself as at once the Jehovah, the one unchangeable
and eternal God, and the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and
of Jacob,l who was going at last to do for their posterity
what He had pledged His word to accomplish for them:
And as soon as the deliverance was achieved, and the
tribes of Israel lay at the foot of Sinai, ready to hear what
their redeeming God might have to say to them, the first
message that came to them was one that most strikingly
connected the past with the future, the redeeming grace
of a covenant God with the duty of service justly ex-
pected of a redeemed people: ‘Thus shalt thou say to
the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel;2 Ye
have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I
bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself.
Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep
my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto
me above all people: for all the earth is mine. And ye
shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy
nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto
the children of Israel.’ They were, indeed, words of
profound significance and pregnant import, comprising in
substance both the gospel and the law of the covenant.
Primarily, indeed, the gospel; for Jehovah announces
Himself at the outset as, in a quite peculiar sense, the
God of Israel, who had vindicated them to Himself by
singular displays of His power and glory—had raised
them to the position of a people, given them national
existence, for the very purpose of endowing them with
the richest tokens of His favour and loving-kindness. It
drew a broad distinction between Israel as a nation, and
all merely worldly kingdoms, which spring into existence
by dint of human powers and earthly advantages, and
1 Ex. iii. 6, 9, 13, 15-17. 2 Ex. xix. 3-7.
LECT. III.] TIMES OF PREPARATION. 81
can attain to nothing more than that kind of secondary
glory and evanescent greatness, which such inferior means
and resources may be able to secure. Israel, however,
stands related from the first to a higher sphere; it comes
into being under special acts of Divine providence, and
has both its place of peculiar honour assigned it, and the
high prerogatives and powers needful for fulfilling aright
its calling by reason of its living connection with Him
who is the eternal source of all that is great and good.
Considered, therefore, in its now ransomed and indepen-
dent position among the nations, Israel is the creation
of God’s omnipotent goodness—the child, in a manner,
which He has taken to His bosom, which He will
endow with His proper inheritance,l and whose future
safety and well-being must be secured by Divine faith-
fulness and power. But for this very reason that God
identified himself so closely with Israel, Israel in return
must identify itself with God. Brought into near rela-
tionship and free intercommunion with the Source of holi-
ness and truth, the people must be known as the holy
nation; they must even be as a kingdom of priests, receiv-
ing from His presence communications of His mind and
will, and again giving forth suitable impressions of what
they have received to the world around them. This,
henceforth, was to be their peculiar calling; and to in-
struct them how to fulfil it—to shew them distinctly
what it was (as matters then stood) to be a kingdom of
priests and an holy nation—the law came with its clear
announcements of duty and its stern prohibitions against
the ways of transgression. What, then, are the main
characteristics of this law? and how, in one part of its
enactments, does it stand related to another? This
naturally becomes our next branch of inquiry.
1 Lev. xxv. 23.
82 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
LECTURE IV.
THE LAW IN ITS FORM AND SUBSTANCE—ITS MORE ESSENTIAL
CHARACTERISTICS—AND THE RELATION OF ONE PART OF ITS
CONTENTS TO ANOTHER.
IN this particular part of our inquiry, there is much
that might be taken for granted as familiarly known
and generally admitted, were it not that much also is
often ignored, or grievously misrepresented; and that, for
a correct view of the whole, not a little depends on a
proper understanding of the spirit as well as formal con-
tents of the law, of its historical setting, and the right
adjustment of its several parts. If, in these respects, we
can here present little more than an outline, it must
still be such as shall embrace the more distinctive features
of the subject, and clear the ground for future statements
and discussions
I. We naturally look first to the DECALOGUE—the ten
Words, as they are usually termed in the Pentateuch,
which stand most prominently out in the Mosaic legisla-
tion, as being not only the first in order, and in them-
selves a regularly constructed whole, but the part which
is represented as having been spoken directly from
Heaven in the audience of all the people, amid the most
striking indications of the Divine presence and glory—
the part, moreover, which was engraven by God on
the mount, on two tablets of stone—the only part so
engraven—and, in this enduring form, the sole contents
LECT. IV.] COMMANDS OF THE DECALOGUE. 83
of that sacred chest or ark which became the centre of
the whole of the religious institutions of Judaism—the
symbolical basis of God’s throne in Israel. Such varied
marks of distinction, there can be no reasonable doubt,
were intended to secure for this portion of the Sinaitic
revelation the place of pre-eminent importance, to render
it emphatically the law, to which subsequent enact-
ments stood in a dependent or auxiliary relation.
1. And in considering it, there is first to be noted the
aspect in which the great Lawgiver here presents Him-
self to His people: ‘I am Jehovah thy God, who have
brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of
bondage.’ The words are merely a resumption of what
had been shortly before, and somewhat more fully, de-
clared in the first message delivered from Sinai; they
give, in a compendious form, the Gospel of the covenant
of promise. Jehovah, the unchangeable and eternal, the
great I am; this alone, had it been all, was a lofty idea
for men who had been so long enveloped in the murky
atmosphere of idolatry; and if deeply impressed upon
their hearts, and made a pervading element in their reli-
gion and polity, would have nobly elevated the seed of
Israel above all the nations then existing on the earth.
But there is more a great deal than this in the personal
announcement which introduces the ten fundamental pre-
cepts; it is that same glorious and unchangeable Being
coming near to Israel in the character of their redeeming
God, and by the very title, with the incontestable fact
on which it rested, pledging His faithful love and
sufficiency for all future time, to protect them from
evil or bring them salvation.1 So that, in coming forth in
such a character to declare the law that was henceforth
to bind their consciences and regulate their procedure
1 Ex. xv. 26.
84 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
alike toward Himself and toward one another, there was
embodied the all-important and salutary principle, that
redemption carries in its bosom a conformity to the
Divine order, and that only when the soul responds to
the righteousness of Heaven is the work of deliverance
complete.
The view now given received important confirmation in
the course of the historical transactions which immediately
ensued. The people who had heard with solemn awe
the voice which spake to them from Sinai, and undertook
to observe and do what was commanded, soon shewed
how far they were from having imbibed the spirit of the
revelation made to them, how far especially from having
attained to right thoughts of God, by turning back in
their hearts to Egypt, and during the temporary absence
of Moses on the mount, prevailing upon Aaron to make a
golden calf as the object of their worship. The sensual
orgies of this false worship were suddenly arrested by the
re-appearance of Moses upon the scene; while Moses
himself, in the grief and indignation of the moment, cast
from him the two tables of the law, and broke them at
the foot of the mount1—an expressive emblem of that
moral breach which the sin of the people had made
between them and God. The breach, however, was
again healed, and the covenant re-estab1ished; but before
the fundamental words of the covenant were written
afresh on tables of stone, the Lord gave to Moses, and
through him to the people, a further revelation of His
name, that the broken relationship might be renewed
under clearer convictions of the gracious and loving
nature of Him whose yoke of service it called them to
bear. Even Moses betrayed his need of some additional
insight in this respect, by requesting that God would
1 Ex. xxxii. 19.
LECT. IV.] COMMANDS OF THE DECALOGUE. 85
shew him His glory; though, as may seem from the
response made to it, he appears to have had too much in
his eye some external form of manifestation. Waiving,
however, what may have been partial or defective in the
request—at least, no farther meeting it than by present-
ing to the view of Moses what, perhaps, we may call a
glimpse of the incarnation in a cleft of the rock—the
Lord did reveal His more essential glory—revealed it by
such a proclamation of His name as disclosed all His
goodness.1 ‘The Lord,’ it is said, ‘passed by before
Moses, and proclaimed, Jehovah, Jehovah God, merciful
and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness